Bought And Sold
by Tevinter of our Discontent
Summary: AU. Rich enough to buy a slave for his weight in lyrium, strange enough to set him free for no clear reason, the newest Magister of the Tevinter Imperium, Twyla Hawke, is as much scientist as mage. Fenris/Fem!Hawke/Anders, main pairing is not slash, and no spoilers as to who ends up together at the end. Plot focus is on social/scientific revolution, not romance.
1. At The Hanged Man

You are Varric Tethras?" The voice was male, deep, and Tevinter-accented. Varric raised his eyes from the page to take in the speaker. Elven. Frost white hair, pointy armor, even pointier greatsword, and a guarded expression. _Strange_ tattoos.

"That depends. Are you here to collect on a debt or avenge an insult?" he asked, setting down his quill.

"Neither. The Merchants' Guild directed me here. I come bearing the offer of…well, perhaps it is better if you read it for yourself." The elven man reached into a satchel and brought out a folded multipage document, slightly battered around the edges from handling.

Varric took it. " 'To whom it may concern; I, Twyla Hawke, Magister of Tevinter, seek a full-time financial advisor willing to relocate to Minrathous. The candidate I seek must have intensive knowledge of double entry accounting, practical and theoretical economics, and self-defense. They must also be able to render covert business dealings utterly untraceable, and be from outside the Imperium. A certain flexibility of mind and morals will be a distinct asset. Expect the work to be, at times, dangerous and disagreeable. Salary will be ten percent of my yearly revenues, five hundred sovereign signing bonus.'" He flipped through the other pages. "And this is a contract…with a Merchants' Guild bond for travel expenses. Do you have a name, friend?"

"…Fenris will serve that purpose," the elf said.

"Fenris, would you care to take a seat? This calls for a detailed explanation. What are you drinking?"

The elf wanted red wine, and while he wasn't happy with the quality of the plonk available in the Hanged Man, he settled down in a chair and drank half a glass before he talked. His eyebrows drew together in the center like a storm about to break, and he began.

"The Tevinter Imperium welcomes runaway mages as a slaughterhouse welcomes yet more cows and chickens. Most of them arrive with only the staves on their backs, or even less than that. Minrathous is full of such desperate, miserable wretches. Some sell themselves into slavery to buy passage there; others are kidnapped or deceived, and a few—very few—contrive a way to thrive there. Make no mistake; I do not sympathize with their plight. There is not one of them who does not arrive saying that all they want is freedom and then become yet another power-ravenous conniver ready to murder, torment, and wallow in blood to get what they want. Not one."

"Not even one?" Varric hefted the contract. "You've gone to a lot of trouble to tote this all the way from Tevinter if that's the case."

"It remains to be seen if my la—if Magistra Hawke is the exception."

"I think I heard a 'My Lady' slip out in there. Is she your—what? Your mistress? Your owner? Your owner's mistress? Your mistress's owner?" Varric was deliberately bating the elf, and enjoying it immensely.

Fenris scowled at him. "I have neither mistress nor owner in any sense. I am free. Legally free."

"And none too happy about it, it seems. You could always sell yourself back into slavery if it makes you so depress—." Varric began, but the elf cut him off.

"Do not mock me!" He slammed the goblet down on the tabletop, sloshing wine indiscriminately on himself and the stone. "There is the contract. If you are interested, take it up and sign it. If not, give it to whoever may be more serious in intent than you. I have more than fulfilled my obligation. Goodbye." He made as if to stand.

"I apologize," Varric asked, passing him a napkin. "Forgive me. That was way out of line. To tell you the truth, you've got me interested. Seriously interested. I just need context, and you're the only one who can give it to me." Unless he misread him badly, this broody elf was actually dying to talk. It was only a matter of putting on the right expression and waiting. Besides, it was true. He was interested. Not necessarily in the job, but in the story behind it.

"Who is this Magistra Hawke? What's behind this job offer? Did she free you? Begin at the beginning and build from there."

'Broody' accepted the square of fabric and blotted off his armor. "No more jibes."

"Not at you," Varric agreed. _Touchy, touchy_.

"Hawke was born of an apostate father and a mother from a family which regularly produced a mage every generation or so. It should come as no surprise that two of their children were born mages, Twyla Hawke and her sister Bethany. Their brother, Carver, has no magic. Of their early life, I know little. Her father is dead; so too, her sister. I do not know how her father died, but it was some time before. When the Blight came, mother and children fled their home only to be trapped between Hordes. Her sister was killed by Darkspawn. How they escaped, I know not, only that they made it onto a ship headed for Kirkwall, only to be denied even a landing. They transferred directly to a ship for Minrathous as a second choice because in the Imperium a mage might live freely." The elf said the last words with a venom snakes and spiders could only envy.

"So what kept her from being just another lamb to the slaughter?" Varric prompted.

"The Qunari. Their ship reached the Nocen Sea and encountered three war vessels patrolling the Ventosus Straits. They should not have stood a chance, but then—whatever Hawke, not yet Magister nor citizen, only one of many penniless refugees—whatever Hawke did, the Qunari vessels came apart. Parts of the sea boiled so that fish came bobbing up to the surface, ready cooked, while in other places, there was ice thick enough to walk upon. Dead Qunari washed ashore for weeks afterward. The most remarkable part was that she shed no drop of blood nor called on any demon, nor touched a lyrium potion. Yet every person on board bore witness that she saved them. What they could not bear witness to, was how she accomplished it. It was a mystery."

Fenris held his right hand over the flame of the candle which sat between them, lowered it until the fire bathed his fingers, and kept it there, in silence. Varric winced as he counted the time in breaths, and still the elf did not snatch his hand away. His face was as serene and untroubled as a millpond on a cloudless day, even as his flesh sizzled and began to smell of cooked meat. Indeed, a small smile appeared on his lips. It was not a happy smile, but it spoke of satisfaction. Finally he closed his fist.

"Somewhere in Tevinter, there is a magus crying out in agony and calling for salves and bandages, and he still has not figured out why, or how his unknown enemy can penetrate all his magical defenses to torture him, or why one should pay close attention to the fine print," Fenris said. "That magister is called Danarius, and he once owned me. It was he who 'gifted' me with these markings of lyrium under my skin. He created a link between us when he did so, an invisible leash of infinite length—except now I hold the handle." He opened his hand, showing Varric an unmarked, uninjured palm. "I don't often indulge. He might catch on."

"Lyrium, eh," Varric gave the 'tattoos' a once over, and whistled. "That's some serious coin you're wearing there."

"It's nothing compared to what he sold me for," the elf told him. "But I get ahead of myself. When these events took place, I was still then the property of Danarius, and what I heard of this was no more than third-hand gossip. Some would have it that she turned into a dragon which alternatively breathed ice and fire. Others said she was a new sort of Abomination, one which did not appear so to outward show. All knew, though, that after defeating three Qunari war vessels singlehandedly, Hawke entered Minrathous as a Heroine of the Empire, she and her family guests of the Archon himself.

"She also entered it on a litter; her exertions had laid raw every sense she possessed and left her more dead than alive. Bright lights, strong smells, loud noises all caused her as much pain as if she were flayed, and they also rigged up a tent over her to protect her modesty, for she could not bear the weight of cloth on her skin. She remained so for days, while the best healers in the Empire, the Archon's own, worked day and night to save her life. It was not entirely gratitude which inspired such generosity and effort on the Archon's part."

"They wanted to know how she did it," Varric deducted.

"Yes, they did," 'Broody' confirmed, "for neither her mother nor her brother knew. Indeed, her younger sister had long appeared the more adept and powerful of the two. She lived. Perhaps she divulged her secret to the Archon, for he chose to favor her. Not as his mistress, but as his protégé. He gave her the title of Magister, a minor mage tower of her own in the city, a villa and lands in the country, and finally, he threw a grand reception to introduce her to the magisterial ranks. That was where I first crossed paths with her. Danarius brought me along as one might a pet monkey or a prize-winning show dog, leashed and collared physically."

"Hmm. Bitter, much?" Varric drawled.

"You can have no idea," the elf replied. "Danarius—I must have had a mother and a father, but in every other way, Danarius was my maker. I might as well have sprung up fully grown from some vat, for all that I can recall. My first memories are of pain and of him." He held his other hand over the candle.

"Uh, could you please not do that? I have to drink here, you know. The smell of cooking flesh kind of puts me off my liquor."

"As you wish." Fenris said, pulling his hand from the flame.

"Back to the first time you met Magistra Hawke. Was she the one who bought you and freed you?"

"Yes," came the laconic reply.

Varric eyed the other's face. Some elves had a oddly beaky, angled look to them, as though someone had pressed their face in a book, nose first. Not Fenris. For an elf, he was broad-faced, and he had a strong chin while still retaining the uninterrupted line of brow and nose. The combination of white hair and silver markings against olive skin was exotic. Yes, he could see that a human woman could find him handsome.

The elf could read, if not minds, then faces. "I shook her hand at parting. That is the most intimate contact I have ever had with her. She did not buy me to ornament her bed."

"I said nothing!" Varric spread his hands in a gesture of denial and defense.

"You didn't have to," Fenris remarked. "The question of why, and why I should be worth so much, has been foremost in the mind of everyone who learns of it."

"If you say so. What was your first impression of her?" Varric pressed, (barely) resisting the urge to grab his quill and take notes.

"Gilded toenails."

"Gilded toenails? Come on!"

"It was the fashion that month. Do you think a slave is encouraged to make eye contact with a magister, even a new-minted one? I looked at her feet." Fenris said, setting his mouth firmly.

"What, you mean to tell me you didn't even sneak a glimpse at her face?"

"I did not say that."

"So what about her face?" Varric tried again.

"She had one. What more am I to say than that? I would have thought her good-looking enough, after a human fashion, had she not been a mage. As she was a mage, I did not like her," replied the elf.

"Norah, another round here!" he called to the waitress. "What about her hair, her eyes? Draw me a picture with words."

"I fear it is not in me. Her hair was dark, moderately long, and hung down her back. Her eyes were too dark to tell pupil from iris. That is all."

"That is the driest description I've ever heard. This woman freed you, yet you can't come up with something, I dunno, more involved or detailed than that?" Varric accepted the glasses from their waitress and pushed the wine in the elf's direction.

"No," was the answer.

"Okay, okay," Varric said. "What else happened?"

"Nothing at that time. Every mage in Minrathous and quite a few from the outlying region were there waiting their turn to shuffle past the Archon. Danarius paused, bowed, said two or three words, and moved on. I followed, having no other choice. Three days later, the Hawke family accepted my master's invitation to dine at his house."

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TBC, if anyone is interested and says so by reviewing, favoriting, or alerting.


	2. Weight and See

Fenris picked up his goblet, but did not drink. "I believe their visit to Danarius was their first social engagement outside the Archon's palace. The Archon, being at least in name the head of the Chantry, leads a quieter life than most magisters, at least in the public eye. In any case, his vice of choice is gluttony."

"No lie-down orgies for forty around the palace, I take it," Varric smiled.

"No, but while Danarius liked to set a good table, he delighted in…other vices. As guests of the Archon, the Hawke family might have fancied they were prepared for life among the magisters. They were wrong." He finished his drink in one long swallow.

"I was there; Danarius liked to have me pour wine for his guests, walking proof of his wealth, his power and his skill. I made them uneasy."

"If you let even a tenth of your feelings show, then I think the fact that you were heavily projecting 'I hate you and I want you dead' at them might have been part of it," Varric commented.

The elf chuckled and even briefly smiled. "…I said exactly the same thing to Magistra Hawke, word for word, that very evening. The Magistra wore white and gold, her mother Leandra purple and silver, both in the Minrathian style, and did so well; her brother Carver wore the clothes of a Fereldan or Kirkwall noble, and looked very hot and uncomfortable lounging on his dining couch. The dinner itself was unexceptionable. Stuffed dormice, roast peacock, lampreys in aspic, all the usual. There was background music; a few of his slaves were trained to play as part of their duties. Conversation served as entertainment for the meal proper. I was kept busy and had no reason to pay any more attention to the Hawkes than to any of the other guests," the elf stated, and paused.

"Until…?" Varric prompted.

"She thanked me for filling her cup. Of course, Hadriana—Danarius's apprentice," his face twisted in loathing, "laughed and chided, 'Thank a slave! Would you thank this table for holding the dishes?'

"Magistra Hawke replied, 'If the table could walk and talk and think, I would.' She looked me in the eye and again said, 'Thank you.' Hadriana laughed again, and said 'If you can call what he does 'thinking',' but then she let it drop. She knows better than to annoy a magister, even a new and untried one. Hawke's mother and brother thanked me, too, rather more quietly. I recall thinking, 'This courtesy they show will not last.'

"With the dessert came the real entertainment, though. An elven boy and a human girl, slaves both, naked, and no more than sixteen years of age, the full glow of youth and health upon them. Also, a donkey, a part mabari mongrel dog, and a Tal-Vashoth—that is, a Qunari who has abandoned the Qun, all male. Those three had been…prepared for the night with drugs or spells that worked them up into a state of…"

"I think you're drawn me a picture," Varric hastily put in.

"Danarius looked around while his guests, or most of his guests, debated the merits of what should happen first, and saw the faces of the Hawkes. 'It's all right,' he told them. 'Those two will be freed by morning for their…cooperation.' He spoke the truth, if death is freedom. The girl…choked to death and the boy died of some internal rupture, but that was some hours later.

"Danarius giggled, but the Hawkes did not seem to find his statement comforting. When the company decided the dog should take the girl first and the Tal-Vashoth, the boy, Leandra Hawke swooned. Her son sprang up, as did Magistra Hawke, and as I was nearest, Danarius nodded that I should assist them, rather than interrupt everyone else's pleasure.

"I was not sorry to leave the room, nor did I care to hasten back. I helped them to the hall, and sent a maid, Orana, for water, cloths, and smelling salts, while Carver Hawke went to see about their palanquin chairs and their porters. The Archon had provided palanquins for their use while they stayed with him. No woman of the Magisterial class ever sets foot on the common ground," he explained when Varric raised a quizzical eyebrow. "They step into a palanquin in their own homes and are carried through the streets until they are indoors at their destination."

"Oh, right," Varric commented. "I think I know what you mean. Every now and then a noble of Orzammar has to visit the surface, and they have these stone box things—Go on."

"Orana returned with the housekeeper, and they helped Leandra Hawke to a retiring room to recover. Magistra Hawke and I were left alone together in the hall.

"Her face was wet, and she flinched at a roar of approval from the dining room—a cheer at the Tal-Vashoth's prowess. 'What a horrible place this is,' she said aloud, 'Yet I can live nowhere else now, not after what happened. It would not be the Circle for me now, it would be execution or Tranquility. And yet this is such a horrible place.' "

"'Do not worry,' I told her. It was an act of the greatest impertinence to speak so to her, but I have ever been foolhardy. 'In six months' time, it will no longer bother you, and in a year you will be up to your elbows in gore, performing blood magic like all the rest of them. The shame and discomfort you feel now, as in so many things in life, will fade very quickly.'"

"'Is there no help for it?' she asked.

"'I could loan you my blade,' I offered. 'It is very sharp. Your death would be swift and relatively painless.'

"The sound she made could have been a sob or a laugh; I could not tell which. 'What would you do, if you were free?'

"'Kill all the mages,' I replied instantly.

"That time she did laugh. 'If there were no mages, then. What would you do?'

"'I do not know,' I admitted. 'It would be pleasant to find out.'

"Besides gilded toenails, it was also the fashion for unmarried women to wear fresh flowers in their hair, and she had a vine with starry white ones in hers. She reached up, tore them off, and ripped the vine to shreds, scattering flowers on the floor. 'Oh, to have the kind of magic that could just make everything better.'

"'Magic has never made _anything_ better…How _did_ you destroy the Qunari?' I asked.

"'You are only the seventy-eighth person to ask me that since I've been here,' she replied. 'I banged two rocks together and it made a spark, a much bigger spark than I thought it would, and I got burned. The Qunari were burned worse, though. I think it had something to do with the sea water. After all, the first thing Father taught us, after "Don't talk to demons and don't use blood magic," was, "Never fling lightning bolts when you're standing in water." Not that it _was_ a lightning bolt.'

"'You…banged two rocks together?'

"'I banged them _very_ hard. With telekinesis.'

"'Impressive,' I allowed.

""You know, this is the first anyone has been at all friendly to me since we got here.' She looked at me. 'Thank you.'

"'Has it escaped you that I hate you and I want you dead?' I snapped.

"'Has it escaped you that this is Minrathous?' she countered. 'You have been honest. That is more than anyone else has been. Is there truly no hope?'

"'At the moment, you are a novelty, and of interest. When you cease to be either, then if you are not powerful enough, if you do not become like them, you will not survive.'

"'Yet if I do become like them, _**I **_will not survive.' She meant her soul would not, of course.

"'I say again, I can loan you a blade. But at this time, I must return to my master.' I said, and that was what I did. I made the rounds with the wine. Then Magistra Hawke returned, and approached Danarius's couch.

"'I am sorry, but my mother has been taken ill, and I must accompany her home,' she said, ignoring the carnal display beyond Danarius' shoulder. 'I could not go without thanking you for your hospitality, however. This has been an evening such as I have rarely enjoyed, and I hope to have the pleasure again soon.' I do not believe he saw what I did: that she only just managed to hold down her gorge. She sounded and looked as sincere, and sycophantic, as Hadriana."

"It seems like you had a pretty deep understanding of her for someone who just met her," he observed.

"No one changes that much, that quickly." Fenris dismissed the observation. "Not unless they become possessed. Danarius acknowledged her courtesy, his attention more on the obscenity in progress. She went on, 'I hope I do not offend against unwritten etiquette, but I have taken a fancy to your wine bearer, the white-haired one. What will you take for him?' It came as a shock when I realized she meant me."

"I would think so!" exhaled Varric. "What happened then?"

"Danarius truly looked at her, and guffawed. 'You mean Fenris?'

"'If that is his name, yes.' she returned.

"'Yes, my little white wolf. But why? What do you want him for?' His eyes narrowed for a moment, calculating how long we might have been gone.

"'I like how he pours wine.' She shrugged off all implication.

"'I see. Well, I am very fond of him, so I would not dream of parting with him for anything less than his weight in lyrium.' His other guests gasped and tittered at that.

"'That is fine,'" Lady Hawke replied. 'His weight in lyrium. Would you prefer raw or refined?' They believed she was joking with them to save face. _I_ believed she was joking with them to save face."

Varric whistled. "Your weight in lyrium, huh? What do you weigh? 155, 160?"

"About that, now. I have put on flesh since then. At the time I scarcely weighed above ten stone. Hadriana was wont to starve me at her least whim and deny me any sleep as well." Fenris told him.

"So, a hundred and forty pounds or so. _Maybe_ Orzammar produces that much raw lyrium in a good decade, but refining it reduces it by half. That would be twenty years worth of lyrium right there. It could easily take twice as long. What happened then?"

"Danarius giggled, 'Oh, refined by all means. Everyone who knows me knows I cannot bear anything unrefined.' This time the laughter and subtle jeers were louder.

"'Refined it shall be, then. It will take me a little time to amass that much.' She frowned slightly.

"'Take all the time you need,' he said, expansively. 'I give you my word I will not sell him to anyone else in the meantime, and once you have it, you may call upon me day or night. I will always be at home, and if I'm not, I'll be at the Arcanists' Hall.'

"'Splendid! That is very handsome of you, and I appreciate it. But now I must go; I cannot make my mother wait. I bid you all good night.' She smiled at all present with every appearance of cheer, and went. Her self-possession was wonderful, I will admit.

"You may believe that once she was gone, they mocked her thoroughly, ripping her every word and action to shreds. As for myself, although Hadriana was in rare form that night, and I went hungry and sleepless, I did not blame Magistra Hawke for it. Hadriana might have done the same for no reason or any reason."

"So," Varric sat forward, steepling his fingers together. "How long _did_ it take for her to get that much lyrium together?"

"A little over two weeks."

TBC...

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A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who read, favorited, put this story on alert, and reviewed!


	3. Making Enemies And Alienating People

"Danarius looked into the source of her power before he ever invited her, of course. He chose a feeble slave mage to serve as his oracle, and then he had me break the man's joints at the ankles, knees, elbows and wrists, so the abomination he created would be damaged and manageable." Fenris stated, his voice even and passionless.

At Varric's lifted eyebrow, he clarified. "I took no pleasure in it, nor felt any horror, either. It was merely an order. Danarius then called a demon into the slave and questioned it. He asked first if she had somehow used blood magic, and it said no. Had she made a compact with any spirit or demon? Again, no. Had she any greater connection to the Fade than most? No. Then how had she done it? What it said was so much nonsense about how lyrium was fish on a bull, cold fuse on, and clear new physics, and how all of that had nothing to do with the Fade."

"Fish on a bull?" Varric frowned in thought. "Either he got a demon with the weirdest sense of humor in the Fade, or that has some meaning beyond the nonsense."

"It was said as though it were all one word. 'Fissionable'," the elf explained.

"Fissionable," the dwarf repeated. "The 'able' part is simple enough. 'Fission'? In mining, a fissure is a crack or a break, and it can be good or bad depending on whether or not you want it there. This is my heritage coming to the fore... So, lyrium is something that can be cracked or broken? _That's_ pretty obvious. You'd never be able to refine it otherwise. Well, there's no unraveling this now. Physics— they're fake doctors who pretend they can heal without magic. Or maybe not so fake. Bread-mold poultices do work, for all that they're disgusting." Varric rubbed his chin.

"You think as I did, that the meaning was too obscure to be understood. And the business about lyrium being 'fish on a bull'—even Danarius did not try to make sense of it.

"On the day she came to buy me, he was in the Arcanist's Hall telling certain of his fellows what he had learned. 'It has little or nothing to do with her connection the Fade. Twyla Hawke has no more skill than any other apostate fresh from the provinces, or so I am informed. Clearly this power of hers is merely some elemental trick. She conjured fire into–what is it called? Ah, that '_gatlock_' powder of theirs, and it blew up the ships. She was lucky, that is all.'

"Perhaps some god was listening, for it was then that Magistra Hawke arrived in her palanquin, bringing with her an entourage of more than twenty people, including her porters, several armed guards, four more porters bearing a chest, and four or five representatives of the Merchants' Guild. That caused a stir, as did her attire when she stepped out of her chair. She had not bothered to wear mage robes into the Arcanists' Hall, much less the garb of magisterial rank—a privilege Hadriana would have killed for."

"I trust she _was_ wearing something," Varric pointed out. "Otherwise I doubt she would have gotten around to buying you, what with all the attention."

"Yes, she was," A glimpse of that rare good humor appeared. "Just a linen dress as any townswoman might wear. It was green, like fresh bay leaves."

"That might have been less about disregard for the trappings of rank than it was about simple comfort and aesthetics," Varric adjusted his cuff. "The only thing uglier and more uncomfortable looking than mage robes are those habits they stuff the Chantry sisters into. But go on."

"'Ah, Magister Danarius,' she greeted him, as every magister in the Hall jockeyed to be in earshot. 'As you see, I have come to take you at your word.'

"'What?' he exclaimed, caught off guard.

"'To purchase Fenris from you. I have brought the lyrium.' She gestured to the chest, and a ripple of surprise ran through the assembly. Not all had been at the dinner, but the story had made the rounds, being too amusing not to repeat.

"'You cannot mean to say that is his weight in lyrium?' Danarius gaped.

"'No, not precisely. As I do not know how much he weighs, I brought two hundred pounds to be certain. He is too lean to weigh more than that.'"

"Hold it!" Varric waved his hands for the elf to stop. "Two hundred pounds of refined lyrium?"

"Yes, in a wooden chest bound in iron and lined in lead. Is it usual to store lyrium in lead?" Fenris asked.

"Noooo…," Varric drew out. "This whole business makes me wonder what she knows that the dwarven community doesn't, because either she stumbled across the mother of all mother lodes of lyrium, or she's figured out how to transmute the stuff. Shit, the Guild must be collectively pissing itself in fear over this, either way..."

"Perhaps transmutation is what the demon meant," the elf pointed out. "She also left behind five hundred pounds more for the Archon as a guest gift when she left to take up residence in her own tower. _That_ story did not get out until the next day."

"_Damn_. Go on. This is getting really good." Varric sat forward, ready to fix every detail in his memory for later.

" Very well." The elf's gaze unfocused, looked inward at memory again. "'Pure lyrium?' Danarius asked, gasping like a gaffed fish.

"'Assayed and affirmed,' said one of the Guild representatives. "'We are here at your leisure. However, there is a certified Dwarven-made scale in the Annex of Industry which would serve the purpose nicely.' The Annex was crowded to the seams with all the magisters and their own retinues, wanting to witness the proceedings.

"The scale in question was one of those with a single platform, not the kind with two dishes and a balance. They weighed me-I made sure to take my greatsword off, for I knew no more what I weighed than she did. If perchance it was too near a thing, I would gladly have removed my armor as well, and the gathered magisters joking about how Danarius ought to feed his slaves better if he always sold them by the pound would have had even more to talk about.

"Then I stepped down, and they put a grain tub on the scales, adjusted for its weight, and opened the chest of lyrium to measure it out. A sigh went through the Hall at the sight. It was in powder form, and as the Guild representative scooped it, I looked at the faces around me. Naked cupidity, envy, fury, all masks had slipped. Hadriana was the worst, for she had long looked forward to the day that she would own me, and told me so. Only Magistra Hawke was serene. Danarius was the most amusing, however.

"On the island of Seheron, there are murky rivers where vandal fish flourish. They are small, but they are dangerous, all the more so because you cannot see them. Drop the entrails of some other fish into the water, and the river will writhe and churn as the vandal fish rise to devour the offal and sometimes, each other. Now imagine the river as his face, and the fish as his emotions. Pleasure, because he was gaining a fortune; he could not have used even a tenth of that to put these markings under my skin. Anger, because I was escaping him and he could not renege and refuse to sell me without losing face. Amazement, because if she were willing to pay so much for one slave, how rich must she be? And finally, worry, perhaps even fear." Fenris's lips curled in an expression which was half smile, half snarl.

"Forget Danarius for a moment," Varric insisted. "What about you? What were_ you_ thinking and feeling? You're finally about to escape a guy who redefines the word evil, this beautiful woman is buying you for more than Empress Celene's dowry—did you even wonder why?"

"At that time—no. There was no room for it. All I could do was watch as the scales grew ever closer to balancing and the dwarf scooped slower and slower, until at last the final grains of lyrium trickled down and the weights equaled out. Whatever might come of it, I had a new owner.

"'Your price has been met, serah,' Hawke broke the silence.

"'So it has,' Danarius waved off the loss. 'Take him, then—with my best.' He added, and turned as though to leave, gesturing at the lyrium. 'Someone—have this sent to my home.'

"'Ah. I am sorry to detain you longer, but in a transaction of this magnitude, I am advised I must insist upon a deed of conveyance,' she said, very gently. That was the cue for another of the Guild to come forward with a traveling desk and produce from it, four copies of a document even thicker than this one. One copy for Danarius, another for the Magistra, one of Guild records, and another to be filed there in the Arcanists' Hall. All had to be initialed on every page, signed, and stamped with personal and official seals. In it, I am told, Danarius signed away all rights of any sort to me or any part of me, even to the hairs on my head, the calluses on my feet, my children yet unborn (not that I have any) and anything that might be made of them. Apparently he paid no attention to the penalty clause for attempting to reclaim or retain me." Fenris stretched and flexed the hand he had burned. "It can be dangerous for a magister to put his name to something without reading it."

"Uhhh—does that apply only to injuries you afflict on yourself, or is it all injuries?" Varric asked.

"All of them," Fenris replied. "But to continue—The deeds were bad enough, but there was still further humiliation to be heaped on Danarius' head. 'What about the rest?' asked the Guild representative, gesturing to the fifty-odd pounds of lyrium left in the chest.

"'That? I cannot be bothered about it—I am sure there are taxes on the sale of slaves, and it seems wrong that Magister Danarius should be out-of-pocket for them. As for the rest—You have been so obliging that I will dare to trespass a little more on your indulgence.' she turned to my former master. "'If you agree—I am setting up my household, and could use more staff. Throw in the blonde girl who played the lute during dinner, and, umm—the cook who made that excellent soup, and I will consider myself well satisfied.'

"'As you like,' Danarius huffed. 'Add their names, whatever they are, to the deeds. I shall send them around.'

He would have liked to escape the throng and go off to lick his wounds until they festered, but there were so many of his fellow magisters thronging the hall, all wanting to congratulate him on his shrewd dealings and increase in fortune that he could not go immediately. At the same time, they were welcoming Hawke with glad cries, extravagant compliments, and invitations. No doubt if she accepts any, they will then parade all their enslaved livestock before her in hopes she will take a fancy to one of them."

"That would be one way to become popular in a hurry," Varric quipped. "I'm more concerned about Danarius. He does not strike me as a man you'd want to have as an enemy, and from how you tell it, he now has a serious grudge against your Magistra Hawke."

"Indeed." Fenris leaned forward with his elbows on the table, resting his chin on his fists and showing all the signs of a man going into a first-class brood. "As you may imagine, there are many disputes among rival magisters, duels fought over the flimsiest slights, feuds going on for generations. Danarius lost face that day, and he is an implacable enemy. Yet there is an unwritten law among the magisters which amounts to no more than 'Pick on somebody your own size.' Magistra Hawke is new in their ranks, she is young, and she did not mean to cause offense. She offered to buy a slave, she met his price, ridiculous though it was, and she treated him throughout with deference and respect. Attack her, and he loses more face rather than regaining it, until she grows powerful enough to challenge as more of an equal."

"Is that something she would know?" Varric inquired.

"I do not know…She was pretending to be more naïve than she truly was. Had she gone to his house alone but for the porters rather than meeting him in the Hall, he might have annihilated her with impunity and kept the lyrium, claiming she attacked him or anything he pleased. Forcing the matter in public before witnesses…was very canny."

"Seems like," Varric agreed.

"Eventually she took her leave, and stepped back into her palanquin. Danarius took the opportunity to whisper to me, 'This is not over, little wolf.'

"'Excuse me, serah. I attend upon Magistra Hawke now.' I replied, and stepped around him."

Varric squinted up at the stripes of sunlight high on the wall, and calculated the time of day. "Hang on, I want to hear more, but I also want to swing by the Guild Bank before it closes and get the inside story on the lyrium. Are you up for walking and talking?"

TBC….


	4. Corroborating Sources

"To begin with, her cousin's only the bleeding Hero of Fereldan," said the head of the Merchants' Guild Bank's Kirkwall office. He was more typically dwarven than Varric, and sported a braided and knotted beard, a chainmail shirt, and a waraxe "Daylen Amell, related on the mother's side."

As bloody and labyrinthine as the infighting among dwarven Houses might be, their dealings with outsiders was sacrosanct. The Bank was safe, solid, utterly reliable, and it damn well intended to stay that way. It handled all manner of financial and legal transactions, and it never , ever divulged information about its clients to outsiders—i.e. non-dwarves . Among dwarves, however, especially if somebody's mother's best friend was somebody else's aunt—well, information flowed.

"You don't say," Varric purred.

"Yes, and they're big on bloodlines in the Imperium, which gave her a degree of legitimacy right there. That and the Archon rather wanted to stick it to the whole magisterial class for being useless against the Qunari. She would have gone nowhere without stopping those ships."

"So I gathered. Any eyewitness accounts to that?" Varric probed. Fenris was present in the office, glowering from a chair set back against the wall, theoretically inconspicuous but in reality seeming to take up at least eighty percent of the room. It hadn't really been possible for him to properly continue his tale while they walked owing to the disparity in height between elf and dwarf. Bending down a foot to carry on a conversation was uncomfortable to do and looked ridiculous as well, so they had confined themselves to a few comments on Kirkwall.

"Oh, yes," The bank official leafed through a thick folder, pulled out a few sheets, and passed them to Varric, who scanned them.

"Everyone dashing about on deck in a panic, battle stations…" Varric read aloud. "Then Hawke got up on the prow, yelled 'Get down! Get down NOW!', moving her hands but not seeming to cast any spell…a thunderclap with a flash of light, a wave of heat, and where the Qunari ships were was a great cloud of steam and smoke shaped like a puff-shroom. Hawke was unconscious on her back, red as a steamed crab where she'd been facing the explosion, like a sunburn that went through her clothes. Others burned to a lesser degree where the light hit them, lead blocked the burns completely.'" he summed up. "Wish they'd been more specific about how they learned about the lead. Context would be nice."

"If it's of interest to you, we have a—well, we don't have an informant in the Hawke household as such, but we do have a contact. When the Hero of Fereldan was in Orzammar gathering support, he met a young Smith, Dagna Janars-dottir. This Dagna wanted to leave Orzammar to study at the Circle of Magi, as she had a special interest in lyrium, its properties and its applications, but the Hero recommended her to his cousin as an assistant instead. The point is, even before she went off to Tevinter, Dagna had been writing about how lyrium gives off an 'invisible burning glow that you can't feel but lead stops it.'" quoted the banker. "Now that she's assistant to Magistra Hawke, she writes home to her Da, and we get copies. Mind you, she doesn't put in any of what you might call confidential information, but we get something from the letters. The last one was all about a lovely garden party the Magistra threw at her country estate for the Archon and some other magisters, where the entertainment was watching the garden grow—."

"That must have kept them on the edge of falling asleep," Varric commented. "Unless—?"

"—Watching the garden grow from seedling and sapling to full size in hours instead of weeks or years. Her servants picked the flowers for the table and the fruits and vegetables for dinner, preparing them with everyone watching to show there wasn't any trickery about it. The Archon was delighted and the party was deemed a splendid success."

"He would be. The man was always complaining about how things weren't fresh enough," Fenris contributed. "As if they could be with half of it grown in Nevarre."

"So she's keeping in the good graces of the man at the top," Varric observed.

"You said servants," the elf growled, "Free people or slaves? What does this Dagna say about that?"

"Uh…well, the Magistra has both. Maybe. She hires some free people, anyhow. Nobody gets whipped, sold off, cut up or bled out, and they're all fed, housed and clothed decently. People, that is, other magisters, make her out to be soft-hearted and a bit soft-headed, too. Eccentric, like. The Bank believes her to be sharp but still green."

"Hmph," Fenris huffed, settling back in his chair. "Of course, if it was widely known that she bought me only to free me, they would not think her eccentric; they would think her mad."

"About the buying," Varric put in, heading the conversation off at the pass and in the direction he wanted, "or more to the point, about the lyrium."

"Oh, yes. Well, the good news is, the Bank now has a massive lyrium reserve to list among its assets. The bad news is, we'll be paying off Magistra Hawke and her heirs for the next couple of centuries."

Varric whistled. "Really?"

"Uh-huh. She came into the office, cool as you please, explained that she had all this excess lyrium around and what should she do with it? After the manager there passed out and came to again, they hammered out an agreement: We'd buy it from her on the installment plan and she wouldn't go making any more."

"So she is—was—making it?! Did she say how?" Varric asked.

"Magic, of course. Never mind that it ought to take more lyrium than she could make. Anyhow, now all the Houses are trying to search out presentable lads with a leg fetish who are prepared to risk being turned into a frog when their wife gets mad at them."

"What, you mean as _suitors _for her?" That made Varric Tethras stare in amazement. "They're prepared to go so far as to bring a human mage into a House?"

"To get back the kind of money we'll be shelling out? Maybe not a deep-downer, but a surfacer would in a heartbeat. Besides, they're made the same as dwarven women, just taller and maybe a little scrawny. The height difference doesn't matter when you're lying down, or so I've heard. I don't suppose you—?"

"Me? " Varric pointed at his chest. "No, no, I'm not into humans. I'm considering a job as her financial advisor, that's all. By the way, how much is the Bank paying her per year?"

The head of the Kirkwall Bank glanced at Fenris, then said a number.

Varric whistled again. "Her offer is ten percent of her yearly income."

"Take it," the banker advised.

* * *

"So dwarves feel the same way about humans as humans feel about elves," the elf said with a certain gloomy satisfaction once they reached the street again. "Superior."

"It isn't fair to generalize about anyone, and I'm the last man to claim superiority on the grounds of race. Style, both in manner and writing, chest hair, and crossbow maintenance, yes, there I am superior, but I try not to let it go to my head," Varric replied. "Anyhow, I'm definitely interested, but I'm not quite sold. Shall we go back to the Hanged Man? I believe you left off when you were walking away from your old master."

"Yes. However, the next part might be better told by someone who knows the Magistra much better than I."

"Who might that be?" the dwarf asked,

"Her mother."

"Her mother…her mother is here in Kirkwall?"

"Yes, and here in Hightown, or at least she was." Fenris looked at the intersection and led them off toward the market.

The proprietor of the respectable (meaning that it lacked a tenth of the character that Varric's beloved Hanged Man had) inn where Leandra Hawke was staying might have liked to deny entry to the sullen, heavily armed elf, but he looked quite happy to admit an elegantly garbed (yet equally well armed) dwarven gentleman. The two impulses must have averaged out, because he let them wait in the common room while he sent a maid up to tell the Magistra's mother that she had guests. After inquiring who they were, she sent word back that they should come up to her private parlor, and to send up tea.

"Ah, Fenris! I'm glad to see you again. I had hoped you would come by." If Twyla Hawke had inherited her mother's figure and half her warmth and charm, then she wouldn't lack for suitors with or without a fortune in lyrium.

"Truly? I did not want to intrude—." It was touching to see how the elf fumbled when faced with someone who knew him and liked him anyway. "This is Varric Tethras. There is something he would like to know about. I hope it is all right that I brought him."

"Is this about my brother and some gambling debt?" she asked warily.

"No, ma'am. Fenris offered me a job with your daughter Twyla by proxy, as it were, and I wanted to know more about her and her concerns before I signed." Varric turned on the charm himself.

"Some collector has been troubling you?" Fenris asked, his brows coming together in a scowl which boded ill for Gamlen Amell and his creditors.

"No, they haven't approached me. My brother has…been unwise, but I don't believe he would—but what would you like to know?" Leandra Hawke pushed down her concerns and waved the two men to sit down.

"Anything and everything you think I should know—but Fenris suggested I should start with the day she brought him home with her." Varric smiled.

"I can do that, but it doesn't really start there. It begins…Heavens, it begins back when Carver and Bethany were born. You have told him about Carver and Bethany, haven't you?" she turned to Fenris.

"As much as was my place to do so, serah." At that point, the maid brought up the tea, and the conversation was interrupted for a moment.

"Carver and Bethany were twins. Twyla was four when they were born. She was very excited about having a brother and sister, but from the beginning, she and Bethany had a bond at least as strong as Carver's with Bethany. If he hadn't been a boy, if he were a mage—but there was no helping that. Twyla was also bigger and stronger for years, of course. Carver surpassed her eventually, as is the natural course of things, but by then their roles were set. She was the elder and the leader, but he was strong-willed too, and he was a born warrior. Natural antagonists, the pair of them, for all that they love each other. Until…until Bethany died, and then it all changed."

* * *

Again, TBC….and a massive thank you to those who fav, follow and review!


	5. Meanwhile, in Minrathous

It was the masseuse who found the lump in Twyla Hawke's breast as she worked sweet almond oil into the newest, youngest, magister's skin. Hawke did not often visit the gynnasia, as she had a private, newly renovated bath suite at home with nearly all the amenities of the public bath—heated floors, a rain-bath room for getting clean before taking a long luxuriant soak in the hot room and then a brisk dip in the cold plunge and finishing up in the warm drying room. Plus she didn't have to have Orana watch over her belongings every moment at home as she did in the semi-public dressing rooms.

However, the gynnasia had mud baths, beauty treatments, attendants who would depilate the hairs she didn't want and dress the hair she did, and masseuses.

The dwarven woman whose strong hands were impersonally working the tension out of Twyla's sinews paused, pulling away when she touched the irregularity under the skin.

"What's wrong?" Twyla asked, opening her eyes.

"Magistra—this may be more a matter for your healer than for me. There is a hard nodule—." She gestured to Hawke's left breast. Hawke felt for herself. Yes, there was a lump, a little to the right of the nipple, unyielding and immobile.

"It is nothing," Hawke lied. "I am prone to them at this time of the month, right before—," she paused delicately.

"Ah," the masseuse responded, and went on with the treatment, but she carefully avoided touching Hawke's breasts after that. Which was fine with her either way; she was there to relieve her nigh unendurable stress, not for erotic gratification.

Unfortunately the discovery of the lump only heightened the stress to the point where the massage was useless, as Hawke's fears began to play with her mind like Darkspawn kicking around a human head.

_First the moles…_ A few weeks ago, she had begun finding brown-black spots where she never had them before, shapeless ones like dots of ink dropped randomly on wet paper. She Healed them away when she found them, but then she would find others only a few days later.

_Now this…it is not proof the Crab is gnawing at me, but these are signs of… what may possibly be cancer_. Healing was not her specialty, and she had no particular talent for it. Her talent was for perceiving, moving, and altering things too small to be seen by the naked eye. As a healer she was third-rate or worse.

_I need a healer, a dedicated one in all senses of the word_. The Archon had said she might make use of his healers whenever she needed, but they were his creatures, not hers, and any she might consult in private practice would then be privy to her secrets—and if, as she suspected, she _was_ diseased, she could not afford to have it known. _The least weakness is blood in the water. I must be strongest where I appear weak_.

There were other people who had been exposed when she destroyed the Qunari war vessels. None had been burned as terribly as she had, but she had had the benefit of immediate, round the clock treatment, and they had not. _I have a responsibility to them, if they are also falling ill because of what I did. _

Unfortunately, mages with exceptional healing abilities were rare, and even more so in the Tevinter Imperium. Healing and blood magic were incompatible, at least as far as healing other people rather than the blood mages themselves; healing and the demonic, even more so. The sort of high-energy magic she herself performed was contradictory. At least now she had lead shielding for her workshop, leaded glass for the windows, work clothing with lead foil sewn into it for herself and for her assistant.

_The damage to me might already be irreparable I need a healer. There is only one option, unhappy though it is. I shall have to buy one_. She lifted her head. "Can someone bring me this week's auction house catalog, please?" The bath attendants were more than happy to oblige; Magistra Hawke always tipped, and tipped generously at that.

She took the listing and leafed through it, skipping both Unskilled Labor and Skilled Labor, going directly to the Mages section. It was not good to dwell on the details (_nineteen year old youth from slave family, never bled, skilled at bedsport, most agreeable disposition, curly brown hair and blue eyes, initial offering to public, starting bid 75 Imperial Reals_), nor to think of how very nearly she and her family came to winding up in such a catalog. _I __**cannot **__buy them all nor free them if I did_. Not all slaves were like Fenris; Orana had gone into a panic attack just at going halfway across the city.

It was absolutely vital not to go to an auction in person, not to see the faces.

There was only one healer under the Mages category:

Male, twenty-five to thirty, Fereldan immigrant. Exceptional healing talent, could also serve as tutor/caregiver for children. Ginger hair, brown eyes. Bled but not to excess. Fourth time at auction, starting bid 225 Imperial Reals.

Not ideal; she would have preferred more choices—as though the lives set down on the page were so bolts of fabric in different colors and patterns—but also not ideal from the history given. Too valuable just to sacrifice thanks to his talent, he had gone through three owners already, which meant he was a disciplinary problem of some kind, although the suggestion that he would make a suitable pedagogue suggested he was not vicious. It would also be awkward buying a fellow immigrant.

"Pen, paper and ink, if you would," she commanded. It was possible to quietly buy an item up for auction without going through the actual auction itself, by means of a private treaty sale. You probably paid more than you would at an actual auction, but it saved time, eliminated the risk of losing the item, and was, as the name of the transaction said, private.

* * *

In the slave pens, Anders huddled in a corner, filth upon filth caked on his rags, ground into his skin. He could no longer remember a time he had not been hungry. _I thought there could be nothing worse than confinement in the Circle, other than being made Tranquil. I was wrong._ _The only thing worse than what the Chantry and the Templars do to us is what we do to each other_.

The pen's ceiling was so low he could not stand upright. _I thought I was so clever. Dressing that burned corpse up in my robes after the battle at Vigil's Keep…making for the coast…talking that ship's captain into giving me passage for free in exchange for my services as a healer. Finding out when we landed that it was a slave ship and not a refugee ship._ His mind shied away from what happened on the ship itself. _Maker's shite, I should have taken my chances against the Darkspawn when Amell saved me from the Templars and told me to clear out. I shouldn't have gone back to 'help'. At least I never drank from their damn goblet_.

Upon his arrival in Minrathous, a long established Magisterial clan had bought him. His primary duty was to heal the cuts of those who had been bled, and keep them healthy so they lasted longer. The first time he escaped, they sent slave hunters after him to bring him back. The second time, the slave hunters took him to the pens to be sold.

His second owner sent him to the mines for much the same duties—keeping the pit slaves in working condition. That meant if another half-day of work could be squeezed out of the poor wretches before they dropped dead, it had to be. His third owner had been a brothel keeper. Again he was to keep the workers in working condition; he had thought it wouldn't be so bad, until he realized there was an infinite difference between voluntary whoring as at the Pearl in Denerim, and slave-prostitution.

He had been beaten. He had been bled. Now he was to be auctioned off again. To whom this time? What new horror and degradation would he be forced to witness? To undergo?

_Why can I not simply die?_ He remembered the Spirit of Justice which had found itself inhabiting the body of the deceased Grey Warden Kristoff. _Poor sod. I imagine he's rotted away to nothing by now. He never learned there's a difference between the ideal and the real. In this world, there is no such thing as Justice. There's __**just us**_.

The pen keeper had to thump him in the head before he heard and understood the message. "Get _up_, healer-man. You've got a new owner."

"I do?" He struggled to the door of his pen, half-waddling. "…No, I can't. The auction hasn't—."

"Private sale, boyo."

"But who?" he asked.

"How should I know? Get your arse in gear, you're being delivered this afternoon."

It seemed that he was, as is, filth , rags and all. He would have liked the pre-auction bath all slaves had, and the change into clean rags, had his mind not been sunk in such a deep morass. Instead, it was a ride in a bumpy cart through the hot, raucous, and dusty streets to one of the smaller mage towers—although 'tower' was something of a misnomer. 'Castle' was a better term, but it was a very small castle. Five towers of varying height, two short, two medium, and one tall, were built around a central courtyard, he discovered upon being turned over to the steward at the service entrance. He also felt, as he crossed the threshold, that there were very powerful wards around and even over the towers, hushing the noise of the outside world. Someone took security and safety very seriously. Blinking, he looked around at the courtyard, with its orange trees heavy with ripening fruit, at white flowers and a sprightly fountain tiled after the Antivan style, all blues and greens on white.

"Whose is this place?", he asked the steward.

"It's Magistra Hawke's," replied the elf. He had graying blond hair. "I'm Aron. C'mon, you can't go up to her as you are-you look fit to faint dead away at any moment. The kitchen's this way."

Anders followed Aron, who had neither the cringing servile attitude or the bullying ways he had come to expect among the slaves in a Magister's household. There were no visible scars on him, but then he was tidily dressed in well-kept garments with the House badge sewn on the left breast, a crimson hawk.

"Dish up some of the bean soup, 'Nia," Aron said upon entering the kitchen, "Bread and a dish of oil to dip it in, too." He gestured for Anders to sit at the long table, reached for a bottle cooling in a basin, and snagged a pair of pottery cups. "You look mazed," he said, pouring what turned out to be cold tea.

Anders gulped his while the elf rambled on. "It's all right. It takes some getting used to. Were you born to the collar? No, I can see you weren't. You can only get so low if you knew more than slavery, once. Want some more? Oh, here."

The kitchen maid set down a big bowl of bean soup, and whatever else the elf was saying went away in a garlicky fog of beans and broth with sausage cut up in it, and brown bread, no more than a day old, dripping with greeny-gold olive oil. It was food, _real_ food , such as he had not eaten in—nearly a year? There was plenty of it, too. As he reached the bottom of the bowl, he became aware again of people talking around the edges of his happy place.

Phew, he's whiffy, isn't he?/he can't go up there smelling like that/or looking like that, neither/well, what are we going to do, we can't go firing up the baths just for him/there's the copper, isn't there, for washing the dishes and pans/Plenty of water there/I guess that'll work… /what about clothes, he's a foot taller than any of the spares on hand/there's the things the Magistra's brother left behind, his old things, they'll have to do…

So they readied a big washbasin, soap, towels and a razor, so he had a chance to wash up and even shave, and while he was doing that, someone brought him clean clothing, worn and too loose on his frame, but not rags.

"You'll do now, I think," Aron judged, assessing him. "Got some color back in your face. Come on, the Magistra's waiting."


	6. The Lady in the Tower

The elven steward, Aron, led Anders out across the courtyard, a shortcut to the tallest tower. Then they climbed stairs, more stairs, and yet still more stairs, until finally they reached the turret. Roofed yet open to the air and elements, the turret had been fitted up as a private sitting room for the Magistra; her favorite area of the house, the elf said, as they reached the top. It was not hard to guess why; well above the noise and stink of the city, the turret had gentle cross breezes blowing through it.

"Magistra, the healer is here," the elf called.

"Over here," a voice came from behind various plants and pieces of furniture. "Thank you, Aron. I'll ring when we're done."

"Very good, Magistra," the elf said, and retreated.

Anders looked around, still bewildered. If this was her favorite room and furnished to please her and her alone, then she had rather unique taste, a fearless sense of color and was as apt to sit on the floor as in a chair, judging by the floor cushions. There were books, a telescope—and a cushioned platform hanging from the ceiling by chains decked with bells. Perhaps this was where she trysted with her lovers?

"Straight ahead and to the right," directed the unseen lady of this mage tower. He picked his way through the maze, hearing the sounds of scurrying, and surprised a small black and white kitten, who sprang back, arched its spine, puffed up its fur, and danced away sideways in mock fear. The corners of his mouth twitched a little at that; he had long loved cats.

"Her name is Mischief," said Magistra Hawke, making him whip his head around, "although I've taken to calling her 'Mitchie'. Her sister here is Mayhem, or more informally, 'May-may' ."

She was young—no child, but certainly no older than he was, and perhaps a little younger. She was young, sloe-eyed and comely of face and form, as evidenced by the finely pleated silk dress that clung to her figure, red-violet like the blood of crushed amethysts. She had a second kitten, this one a black and grey tabby with white feet, tucked between shoulder and chin. It looked like it was happy enough but just about ready to squirm away.

"_You_…are the Magistra, the one who bought me?" he asked, dumfounded.

"Yes—phhft." The kitten had stuck its paw in her mouth. "Fank yoo, May-may." Magistra Hawke put her down—she sped off to pounce on her sister—and plucked cat hair off her tongue. "I'm Twyla Hawke, and you are Anders. Please sit down. It's awkward conversing when eyes are not at a level."

"But you're young," he protested, even as he half-collapsed among the cushions. "Too young to be a magister or head of a House." That she was lovely and fond of kittens was not evidence of good character—there had been a young bride in his original buyers' clan with a face like a lily who doted on her cat, and he had to heal her personal attendant's face more than once, the last time after her mistress had burned her so badly with a curling iron that she had lost an eye.

"I am the first of my line and newly elevated to this rank," she explained, twitching a long stem of grass for the kittens' amusement. "My situation is precarious, and my life is apt to be short—all the more so because I fear for my health. Are you strong enough to diagnose what is wrong with me?" She looked dubious.

He had a good look at himself while shaving, so he understood why. His eyes were sunken in and bruised looking, his skin pulled tight over the bones. He looked not unlike Justice had when he last saw him, ironically.

"I am strong enough to try," Anders told her, wondering if there really was something wrong or if she was only fancying it. He reached out a hand but did not touch her physically, sending out tendrils of energy. The answer was—she was not imagining it. There were malign knots pulsing in her bodily aura, corresponding to abnormalities in her flesh—two large ones, one in her left breast, the other in her upper back, just below the arm— and myriad others, tiny but waiting their turns.

She partially read in his face what the answer was. "Tell me without fear and do not spare me," she commanded.

"At this time, you have a tumor in your breast, here," he pointed to the spot on his own chest, "and a mole, I think, on your back here." He twisted in demonstration. "That is not all, though. The seeds of other such cancers are already planted."

"I guessed as much, although I did not know about the mole." She squeezed her eyes shut and her mouth did something tragic. "It's not a place one can easily see. I was burned in an explosion some six months ago, and it only seemed like I was entirely healed. This is the result. Can anything be done?"

"Yes!" he burst out in sympathy. "The two which exist now can be healed, but it must be done slowly so the tissues do not necrotize, that is, so they don't die and rot inside. For the rest— I believe the impurities can be flushed out of your system with potions. No simple infusion of elfroot is going to have an effect on this, but there are remedies, some of which may make you feel sicker than you do now."

"Can you make them?" she asked.

"Given equipment and ingredients, access to certain books, yes." The kittens' romping led them to an end-over-end tussle in the space between Anders and Hawke, making her smile.

"Are you just going to let Mitchie kick you in the head like that? That's it, gnaw her ear off… You shall have whatever you need. I did not bring you here only for my own sake, however." She said.

_Ah. Here it is—the worm in the shiny red apple, the rot at the core. What is she into? Necromancy? Yet more blood magic? Sacrificing children and infants?_

"There are others who were burned in the explosion—none so badly as I, but they too may need both healing and the same potions. I am having their whereabouts looked into. Also, you will be expected to heal others among my servants as needed, and—." She gestured to the world beyond the tower. "You may have seen that the surrounding neighborhood is sunk in poverty and squalor. I…dislike looking out and seeing a slum." Her words were noncommittal, the tone light but suggestive of disgust under the surface.

"Then you must hate most of the city," he commented wryly.

"And so I do, but I will settle for improving it as far as the eye can see—at first. If you have any energy and time to spare after your primary duties are done, I would have you establish a clinic for those who cannot afford the services of a healer, those who need it most. You may need assistants; that can be arranged."

"That—is what you want of me." It wasn't a question. "You bought me and brought me here to _help _people."

"Do you object? I know you have a history of running away, but I would prefer to give you autonomy rather than put shackles on you." She raised an eloquent eyebrow.

"I think I have done with running," He looked around at the turret room again, at the gracefully carved and pierced vhenn-wood shutters, the starry lanterns, the vase of marigolds and the bowl of tangerines on the low table beside him. At the kittens who were climbing into his lap. "**_You_**…own me now." He tried to keep the deeper truth of it out of his voice. Free or slave, he was hers.

* * *

A/N: A short one this time, but I think it does what it needs to.


	7. Too Much Information

"All lives begin the same way," Leandra said, swirling the tea around in the bottom of her cup. "A mother and a father—whether a child is wanted so very, very badly, whether they're an embarrassing accident or, Maker forbid, the result of violence and defilement, they all begin the same way. Human, elf, dwarf, Qunari—but there are many thousands of ways lives can end. Twyla, Bethany and Carver were all _wanted_…Parents should never outlive children. I wonder that the Maker allows it."

She drew in a ragged breath, looked up from her tea at Varric and Fenris. "Sometimes I tell myself, even now, all these months later, that, 'Oh, Bethany isn't here right now, she's at the market, or just reading in another room. I'll turn around in a moment, and there she'll be.' The things we do to get through life—because the alternative is remembering how Bethany threw herself between me and an ogre and, and—I don't remember the things I said, at that moment, not in so many words."

She shut her eyes. "And Fenris, don't you dare and tell me I need not speak of this if it gives me such pain," she scolded in a surprisingly maternal way, and the elf shifted in his seat with a guilty start. "I have _not_ spoken of it for long enough…It all happened very fast. The ogre, waves of darkspawn about to overrun us, and then the rescue, all in an eye blink, or so it seemed. We were on a ship before I knew it. The first ship was not allowed to dock at Kirkwall, and we were at a loss for what to do.

"Twyla was simply sitting, holding Bethany's favorite scarf in her hands. She took it from her sister's neck, before… we had to leave the body. Carver was holding up the hull of the ship beside her. 'Well, I know how _one_ of us can get ashore, anyhow,' he said. 'Just tell them Twyla's an apostate and they'll whisk her off to the Circle in no time.'

"'Carver, don't,' I began. 'Twyla is suffering as much as you and I.' Men and women handle anger and grief differently, you see. Men turn their anger outward, women inward.

"'Honestly, Mother, it would be the best place for her. She's the most useless mage that ever lived. No good in a fight, no good as a healer. All she does is mess around with her experiments and read. I bet they've no lack of books in the Circle.'"

"'No good in a fight?'" Varric quoted. "That's not what I've been led to believe."

"Her coup against the Qunari was different," Leandra finished her tea. "Bethany _was_ better at both fighting in the conventional way and healing. Twyla was 'Miss Curiosity' from the moment she opened her eyes, always asking questions, poking at things. As she grew, she searched for answers on her own. I think it was yeast that got her started. We'd bought a barrel of bad beer, Malcolm commented on how it must have been a bad strain of yeast, and that got her interested. Why was some yeast bad and some good? Why use one kind for baking and another for brewing? What about wine yeast? She started trying the different kinds in cups of grape juice on her windowsill. Maker's breath, we thought we'd either wind up with the world's best vintner or she'd drink herself to death."

Her sad lips quirked up. "There is no one who focuses like Twyla when she's fascinated. She would go on about how yeasts were actually little tiny creatures, and how sometimes they just split apart to make more of themselves just alike and other times they made babies which were different, and that was why good yeast could suddenly go sour. Finally Mal got a book on brewing which was written by a member of your race, Master Varric, and found out that she was right. She simply didn't know the proper terms. That was also when he told me he knew she would never succumb to demons. 'Even if they offered her the knowledge of all the Ages, she'd turn them down. She'd rather find out for herself. She's so much in love with the world around us that they've nothing to offer her.' That made him very happy.

"But at the time, Carver goaded Twyla into action. She stood up, went out on the deck, and a few hours later came back with the news that she had found a frantic Orlesian wine merchant on an Imperium ship going to Minrathous. She had just reclaimed his stock from going bad, so that way, using what she had learned years before, she had earned passage for the three of us.

"Carver sputtered, 'So now we're all going to _Tevinter_? Are you mad? Do you _want_ to live among slavers and blood mages?'

"'I want to live,' she shot back, 'Not starve slowly in Fereldan or catch some miserable fever from being crammed in this crowded hold, and useless as I am, I still won't leave my mother and brother to their fates while I go off to the comfort and Tranquility of the Circle! If you've any other ideas or plans, now is the time to bring them up!' He complained, but in the end, we boarded the Imperium ship.

"As far as the attack by the Qunari goes, I was not on deck at the time, nor was Carver. They told those of us who were below to stay there. Listening to what was going on, searching for Twyla down there, and not finding her…the shouting, screaming—then this tremendous noise and a light that blazed through every space and seam between the boards. More shouting—and then cheering, before someone called for bandages, egg whites, elfroot, house leek—all remedies for burns, you see, and 'Get her mother!'

"I need not tell you my emotions when I saw her lying there. My Twyla, my only remaining daughter…But she lived. _She lived_." She went on to relate how they had landed in Minrathous, become guests of the Archon, and waited long weeks for Twyla to recover. "The Archon himself, although quite the most obese man I have ever met, was gracious and generous. I had begun to believe it might not be as bad in the Imperium as the Chantry would have us believe."

"And then you came to dinner with Danarius and his friends," Fenris commented in his usual sardonic manner.

"And then we went to dinner with Danarius and his friends," Leandra agreed. "You told Master Varric about it?" At Fenris's nod, she continued. "That _beast_—and his _beasts_! And those poor children…It made me ill, physically ill, so that I had to leave. I believe it was you, Fenris, who sent Orana to me. She was very kind, and yes, I know she was a slave and it was her job, but she was such a gentle creature, and she spoke so fondly of her own Poppa, that I was very worried for her. That house is not a place for the meek, the timid, the kind or the good. Nor for the loyal or the stalwart." She looked Fenris very definitely in the eyes when she said that. "I spoke to Twyla about Orana and her father afterward, never thinking she had already planned to rescue you if she could."

"Carver had nothing helpful to say about it. 'Still so sure this is where you want to live, Sis? Tell me there was one person there who was worth speaking to!'

"'There was one,' she replied. 'Fenris. He was the wine-bearer at dinner. I spoke to him for a few minutes in the hall, and his conversation was more enlightening than his master's…I offered to buy him.'

"'Oh, wonderful! You're stooping to _buying_ your boyfriends now?'

"'What about that little chambermaid who cleans your rooms, and rather _more_ than your rooms?,' I asked. 'Elven, black haired, green eyes? I'm sure you treat her very nicely and you've made her some pretty presents, but did you think it was only your charm that lured her to your bed? She is a slave too, and was under orders to make herself available to you.'"

"'M-mother!' he stammered. "'I didn't—you weren't to know about her!'"

"'_I_ didn't know about her,' Twyla interjected.

"'You've been ill, dear,' I assured her. 'Don't let it bother you. But it should bother _you_, Carver. She had no more choice than those children tonight. And did you know that if you get her with child, that child would be a slave as well? When one parent is free and one is not, the child always takes the status of the mother. Even if you bought her, you could not set her free. Except in the case of a close relative, the age of manumission is thirty-five.'"

"'He could set his _child_ free,' Twyla pointed out. "'Or send her to somewhere that slavery is illegal.'

"'There isn't any child!' he exploded. "'And what would I buy her with, anyway? Or Twyla this 'Fenris', anyhow? We haven't any money—all we have is an estate that doesn't make a profit and a decrepit mage tower. Oh, I'm sorry,_ Twyla_ has those. We're dependent on her charity.'

"'There is no child that you know of as yet,' I replied. 'I am still not feeling very well, so if you two cannot talk without fighting, I'd appreciate some silence.'"

"Ooh," Varric winced. "I'm sorry, but your son hasn't mastered the art of tact just yet."

"Nor ever will, I fear. Anyhow, over the next few days, we visited the tower in town and the estate in the country to see what improvements might be made—the main problem with the estate is that it once had extensive water gardens that were let go, so half of it was a swampy mess with broken fountains and second-rate statuary everywhere. Twyla stayed there for several days, to see what might be done with it. When she came back, it was with chests and barrels full of lyrium—more lyrium than I ever knew existed. I asked her how she came by it, and she winked at me. 'Remember how Andraste told the faithful to make mud pies when her armies were starving during the siege at Perivantium, and then baked them only to have them come out of the oven as loaves of bread instead of bricks? I worked out how she did it.'

"'That's officially a miracle!' I called after her. 'She did it with prayer and faith!'

"'She may well have prayed and she certainly had faith,' Twyla answered. 'But she also had magic. _My_ kind of magic.'

"'That was all the answer I got out of her concerning that. The next day she went to the Guild Bank, and they took most of the lyrium away. The day after, she went out saying she had an appointment with Danarius at the Arcanist's Hall, only he didn't know it yet. When she came back, it was with you, Fenris."

* * *

Anders woke in the middle of the night, his heart pounding, his brow damp with sweat, and his prick as stiff as a halberd. He'd been dreaming of a woman beautiful as the hour of dusk, who'd drawn him down among the cushions with her. He could swear he still felt her kisses on his mouth. He'd also dreamt she bought him… Disoriented and not knowing where he was, he threw back the sheets—since when had he slept in a bed with sheets?—and sat up. _At least part of this is real,_ he told himself.

After their interview, Hawke had summoned Aron, and told him Anders was to have the ground floor of the east tower, and his rank in the house was the same as Dagna and Aveline—her assistant and her personal guard. What that meant in practical terms was that he now had his own bedroom, a small study lined with shelves for books and cubbyholes for scrolls, and a large workroom with a pump and a sink, empty at the moment except for a couple of worktables.

He regarded the proud stalk between his legs. Between being weak with hunger and revolted by the degradation and abuse in the brothel, it had been months since he'd had an erotic thought, much less a dream. _I wasn't sure he'd ever raise his head again—and he has to get het up about the last woman I dare think of. She has to be able to __**trust**__ me as a __**healer**__. How can she put her life and health in my hands if I'm sporting a bargepole in my pants at the same time? Besides, she owns me. She can do whatever she likes with me_—that line of thought was not about to wilt his manhood, since it conjured up images of **exactly** what she might like to do with him—_which includes castrating me if I make her uneasy_. He considered going into the next room and running cold water over himself from the pump, but instead reached for a handkerchief_. I might as well do my best to wear him out_, he told himself, _make him too tired to embarrass me in front of her. And if I think of her as I do this—it hurts no one but me_.


	8. Money Matters

Leandra smiled wryly. "Carver was crestfallen about the girl. He thought it was all his own attractions that had her surprise him by waiting in his bed one night. As for myself, I knew from the moment I saw how she made a bed that she wasn't simply there as a chambermaid. The sheet corners were a terrible muddle. Anyhow, when Twyla returned from her visit to the Arcanists' Hall with you, Fenris, marching on one side of her palanquin and Aveline on the other—Goodness, how have I forgotten to mention Aveline?"

"I had left her out as well," the elf admitted, "even though I sparred with her every morning for more than a week. She was chief among the armed guards who accompanied the Magistra."

"While we were fleeing Lothering, we came across Aveline and her husband Wesley, poor man," Leandra explained to Varric. "She was a warrior with the Army and he a Templar. They, like we, were fending off the darkspawn , so we joined forces. Wesley was poisoned by darkspawn blood and could not live. After that, Aveline simply stuck with us. She is about Twyla's age,perhaps a year or two older. Back to the thread of my story. When Twyla returned, Carver was avoiding us in some far-flung part of the house. I had been going over the house, making lists of things that needed to be done."

"'Hello, Mother,' Twyla greeted me, 'I've some news that I hope will gladden you. Orana and her father no longer belong to Danarius; they will be here this afternoon.'

"'You—_bought_ them?' I asked, for I _was_ startled. 'What do you mean to do with them?'

"'I should like to know that myself,' Fenris said—no, you actually snarled it." Leandra shot him a look.

"Twyla replied, 'She is a maid and he is a cook. This house requires more than one maid and maybe even more than one cook. I—don't know how I'm going to resolve the question of legal ownership because I _do _need servants but I _don't_ want slaves. As for you, Fenris—I have to call a family meeting which will include you and Aveline, and I will explain my plan for you then. Mother, where is Carver?'"

"He was dredging the cistern of fallen leaves and branches, as it happened, a very mucky and physical chore, and since the baths weren't connected to any water supply right then, he had to stay mucky. At least with the state the house was in, he couldn't really make anything more dirty than it already was. We wound up around the kitchen table, (though the kitchen itself was a wreck and likely hazardous as well) as it was one of the few intact pieces of furniture in the place and certainly the only room with enough chairs.

"'As you all know,' Twyla began, 'we are no longer poor—.'

"'You mean _you're_ not,' Carver began, and I was sorely tempted to simply raise my hand and swat him across the back of his head, I'm sorry to say. 'And what is he doing here?' he asked, poking his chin toward Fenris. 'Maker, you went and _bought_ him, didn't you?'

"'Carver, please!' she cried out. 'I'm sorry I lived and Bethany died. I'm sorry I figured out how to save us when it was too late for her. I'm sorry I was born first. All those things were my fault and I did it on purpose just to get up your nose. All right?' She was on the verge of tears, but her stare was a terrible thing at that moment, and he settled down. 'Thank you.'

"'We are no longer poor. I know that all four of you hate this place, and with good reason. I have no love for it myself. I cannot leave, but there is no reason _you_ need stay. The Free Marches, which turned us away when we were desperate and had nearly nothing, will welcome you when you come with full pockets and purses. I have spoken with Captain Rivaini of the Siren's Call and arranged passage for the four of you to Kirkwall. _Please_—this is not easy, and if I stop I may not be able to go on. Hear me out and _then_ you can shout at me. Circumstances make it impossible that I might live anywhere other than the Imperium; it is, one way or another, a life sentence. Let me not have the pain of knowing I have condemned those I love to live here too.'

"'She brought out four small leather-bound books. 'I have established bank accounts for all of you with the Dwarven Merchants' Guild Bank, and these are your bank books. Mother, this is yours. I know you did not part with our uncle on the best of terms. I hope you find him as welcoming as you could want him to be, but if he isn't, the bank manager here tells me this initial amount is enough for you to establish yourself in Hightown. If Uncle Gamlen invites you to live on the estate with him—well, you'll have funds to invest or you can help those who are as poor as we once were. The money is entirely yours to do with as you wish. One hundred sovereigns will be deposited in this account on the first of every month for the rest of your life, but if you need more, just let me know.' She passed me the book.

"'And what will you do if I go to Kirkwall?' I asked her.

"'I—will live very quietly. When I destroyed the Qunari ships, it was as though I fell on the back of a gryphon that only happened to fly where I wanted to go. It's neither tamed nor bridled, and it's not going away. So I will mess around with my experiments and read until I understand what I did and what form of magic it is. Beyond that—I'll fix up the tower, although probably I'll shut half of it up. Then there's the estate to look after. Perhaps I can do something about the poverty and misery on my doorstep, too. I doubt I will ever marry. I doubt there's a magisterial clan that I would consider allying with, even if I made it clear my spouse would be marrying into my house rather than that I bring everything I own as a dowry to his. You, Mother, are my heir, in case—in case, and after you, Carver and his children, should he have them.'

"'I see. Well, go on. What of your brother?' I asked.

"'_This_ ought to be good,' he remarked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"'Carver, I want to do right by you, but I'm sure I got this wrong. Either it's too much and I'm insulting you by implying you can't make it on your own, or it's not enough and I'm a miser who wants to see you starve. I'm trying to do right by you, though,' she repeated. 'There's some money there to start you off, and after that, you'll have twenty sovereigns a month for the next two years. Once those two years are up, I've arranged to match your earnings every month. All you'll have to do is show what you earned to double your money. You can spend it or save it as you choose.'

"'What I see here is that you're doing as you please, as you always do,' he fumed. He said a few other things, too, but as my son still has some maturing to do, and I have already repeated enough of his comments, I will say only that he eventually took the book, and move on.

"Aveline was next. 'I don't want-,' she began, but Twyla forestalled her.

"'You've been a friend and comrade when things were at their worst, so now that they're better, please share that with us, too. You're more experienced than Carver and you'll find it easier to get established, I know, so the sovereigns will stop coming after one year, but there's a special something waiting should you remarry, as a wedding present.'

"'Thank you,' she said, taking up the book. 'I'll take the money, I'm not a fool, but for my part, I am not leaving. Unlike your mother and brother, I have no kin in Kirkwall. I can grieve for Wesley wherever I may be. From what I've seen today, Hawke, you have a talent for making enemies. Danarius will try for your head one day, and he is only the first. Whatever your power may be, you haven't the reflexes of a fighter. You are going to need a bulwark. Let me be that, and earn this small fortune.'

"'I—would rather know that you were safe in the Free Marches,' Twyla replied.

"'From what I hear, Kirkwall is no soft ride, for all that Minrathous is more dangerous. I would rather know, and I believe your mother and brother would rather know, you had someone watching _your_ back here.' Aveline told her.

"'I completely agree,' I put in. 'Indeed, unless Aveline or someone equally trustworthy remains with you, I will say right now that I _refuse_ to go.' Leandra reached for the pot and poured more tea for both her guests and herself.

"'Mother, that is not fair to Aveline or to me,' Twyla asserted.

"'You are applying a certain amount of coercion yourself, my darling daughter.' Fenris, this is your part: do you want to take up the thread?"

"I will do so," the elf said.

TBC…

* * *

A/N: Enchanter T.I.M., thank you so much for your faithful and enthusiastic reviews! You pick up on things nobody else does, especially the nuances I worked hardest on.


	9. Why?

"As for myself," Fenris began, "I sat at that table because I had been so ordered, not comprehending why I should be privy to these plans or what my role would be. I knew nothing of what a 'bank account' might be, as coin passed through my hands but rarely; higher finance was beyond me. I knew Danarius had a banker, and that was all."

"You are not alone in that," Leandra said with a smile. "I alone had seen a bank book before, but that was before my marriage. Most folk deal only in small coin and rarely see gold, much less have a bank account."

Varric smiled. "I'd wondered why the folks at the Bank didn't look surprised to see you, Broody, and this explains it. You'd been there before."

"Broody?" frowned Fenris. "I do not brood."

"Not brooding? You're broody enough for a dozen hen houses and an ill-tempered swan." Varric commented.

"Swans _are_ the worse," Leandra pointed out. "They can break someone's limb if they're angry enough. Gamlen teased a nesting swan once, and its mate chased him up to the roof of an ornamental gazbo, hissing and flapping. He was stuck up there for over an hour before I told someone. What a_ lovely_ day that was." She smiled at the memory. "But after traveling with Fenris for a month, I can tell you that he is actually in quite good spirits today."

"Really?" the dwarf raised an eyebrow. "He had me fooled."

The elf's mouth twitched with amusement. "Freedom has that effect on me. But to return to my tale—I was sitting among you as though I was your equal, and even including your son's hostility, the easy intimacy you shared, the depth of the obvious affection you bore for one another, was unlike that of a magisterial family. Danarius had kin—a brother whose magic was nowhere near as great as his, several nieces and nephews who were always in need of money or favors. He enjoyed making them flatter him and squirm before he relinquished so much as a tarnished copper. I do not believe he would have placed their welfare before his slightest whim, let alone his own health and wellbeing. I was bewildered.

"More than that—although I have no conscious memory of my life before, perhaps the heart has a sort of memory all its own, made of emotions rather than thoughts, for this situation was familiar to me, a brother, sister and mother together at one table in conflict. It was not merely familiar, it was emotionally enough to rouse a phantom ache in my own chest. I believe I once sat at a table like that before, preparing to do all that lay in my power to rescue those I loved, to set them free and make them happy, although my sacrifice meant never seeing them again. What came of it, I do not remember, but the love and anguish in your daughter's face was the love and anguish I had known.

"My new owner was a mage and a magister, and for all those things I hated her, but she was also someone's child and someone's sibling. I was—conflicted. I did not want to have a reason to admire her or empathize with her—that would get in the way of the rage which was all I had to sustain me.

"Then Magistra Hawke's eyes turned to me. 'If Aveline does not go, then you are all the more essential,' she said. 'Our voyage from Fereldan to Minrathous was long and dangerous even without the Qunari. As little as we had, there were others who had less, and given that three of us were women—there was always something else they could take. We took turns sleeping and never went around the ship alone, for safety. I don't know what your journey will be like, but while I know Carver will protect Mother with his life, he can't stay vigilant both day and night for weeks. So you will accompany them to Kirkwall as my mother's bodyguard.'

"'Wonderful. She's sending a wine bearer along to protect us! What's he going to do, stab attackers with a cork screw?' your son scoffed."

"That was when I _did_ reach over to smack him upside his head," Leandra reminisced. "Carver and Twyla's rivalry is one thing, but being rude to others is something I don't allow."

Fenris's mouth quirked, "Ser Aveline jumped to my defense as well. 'Did his greatsword, his armor and his stance escape you? He may pour wine, but his true role is that of a bodyguard. Whatever career you take up, Carver, you'll need to use your eyes as well as your sword.'

"'Maybe I _will_ go,' he shot back, 'After all, there has to be some military or mercenary company somewhere that doesn't allow _women_. I've had enough of nagging.'

"'There are,' she told him, 'but quite often it's because they prefer male company in all things _and_ all ways, if you catch my meaning.'

"'It might still be worth it.'

"That, however, was enough for the Magistra. She said, quite loudly over their banter, '**When you set foot on solid ground in the Free Marches, you will, by law, be free**. Provided my mother is alive and well at that time, I will not pursue you or send others to hunt you down. You need not return to Tevinter. Since I cannot, by Imperial law, set you free before you turn thirty-five and you can't possibly be thirty yet, this is my way of circumventing the law. I will prepare manumission documents to that effect; should anyone ask what you, a slave, are doing acting like a free man before you're thirty-five, you will have a document to say you are following my orders.

"'Those orders are as follows: As long as you don't harm anyone wrongfully, do whatever the hell you want to.

"'Here is your bank book, with a sum to get you started. You'll have twenty sovereigns a month for two years, and then they stop, because part of being free is being self-reliant. This is a compromise between my concern and your pride—I will not set you free with nothing in your pockets.'

She held the book out to me; I struck it from her hand. 'No. I do not believe this. It is some trick, some trap or joke. _No one_ would buy a slave, a stranger to them, for over a hundred and forty pounds of lyrium only to set him free and give him money to live on. _**No one!**_'"

"'I would. The amount I gave for you doesn't matter; I will never miss it.' she replied.

"I looked to you, Serah Leandra, 'You are her mother. What does she mean by this?'

"'Twyla is capable of a lot of things,' you said, 'and not all of them good or even well-intentioned, but not of such deliberate and vicious cruelty to someone who has not earned it, and _especially_ not of making a promise like that in front of me and not making good on it.'

"Then I looked to your son, 'Don't ask _me_ why she'd do it,' he replied, 'Maybe she thinks she's Andraste or something, but believe me, as somebody who's used the privy after her, her…_farts_ smell as bad as anybody else's. Don't look at me like that, Mother, I said 'farts'. She wouldn't go back on it if she promised it, though. A hundred and forty pounds of lyrium for _you_? That's what _I_ don't believe.'

"'Why?' I turned back to her. 'Why do this for me, when I spoke to you only once before and not long at that? I am a slave and an elf, no kin to you; even in free countries, most humans barely look on elves as people, if that. What am I that you would do this for me?'

"'A friend,' she answered.

"'A friend? I told you I hated you and offered to help you kill yourself!' I snapped.

"'At dinner, Danarius talked about you and boasted about what he did to you, and the way people rolled their eyes when he wasn't looking told me that wasn't the first time he'd done so. Yet you didn't react, not even with your eyes. I thought he'd done something to your mind as well, but when we spoke, I realized that wasn't so. You were intelligent, and your emotions ran deep. You had a sense of humor. For all that you suffered, slavery, cruelty, torture—things I could only guess at—you had not been broken by it.'

"'And for _that_ you call me friend? You have a peculiar definition of what a friend is, if you set suffering as a main criteria,' was my reply.

"'Say what you will, your strength and courage showed me it's possible to survive here in a much worse situation than mine. For that, I'm truly grateful,' She bent and picked up the book. 'Will you take your freedom as my gift in return?'

"I looked at the book, wondering what I was getting into. Finally I did accept it. 'This is, assuming your mother is willing to go.'

"And_ I_ said, 'I would like very much to see my brother and my old friends again, to visit all the places I knew when I was a girl.' Carver put in his bit, saying, 'I can't wait to get away from here,' and so it was settled. The next two weeks were rather confused, with shopping for the voyage and packing with house cleaning and repairs going on around us... I remember seeing you and Twyla spending time with your heads over a book, though."

"She was teaching me to read, write, and do numbers so that I might sign my name and be sure the figures in my bank account were accurate," Fenris confirmed. "I fear I was a…resistant student, but she was patient. I have not let go of my belief that all mages are inherently evil and magic is automatically corruptive—but I am willing to admit that Magistra Hawke may be the exception that proves the rule."

"Thank you for that," Leandra smiled at him. "Carver secretly came to me for an explanation of how the bank book worked rather than ask Twyla. Finally, however, the day came that we were to sail for Kirkwall."

TBC….Sorry that my updates are so short, but at least they're frequent!


	10. Fond Farewells

"Hold it, hold it," Varric made a stopping gesture, "When did you find out that when you got hurt, Danarius took the wound? That had to have been before you left Minrathous."

"It was," Fenris replied."Other than lessons with the Magistra, I had little to do, except eat and sleep—."

"Both of which you needed badly," Leandra interjected.

"—so I took to sparring with Aveline and Carver, to keep in training. The only time I even left the tower grounds was to accompany you to a play."

"The Princess of Birds," she nodded. "It was so very funny, and so unlike the dreadful old comedies from the ancients we had to study when I was a girl."

"I quite enjoyed seeing a play," Fenris reminisced. "It is disappointing that Kirkwall has no theater. It was an experience I would like to repeat. Danarius never went to see plays; perhaps because he did not like going anywhere that he could not be the loudest in the room, let alone having to be quiet for upwards of three hours."

"Ah, yes," Varric added. "Plays divert people from contemplation of the Maker, and making up things which never happened and presenting them as if they did, is forbidden here. Trampling on the Maker's prerogatives or something… I've written a few novels and they're always on the verge of being banned for exactly that. Well, that and the torrid bits. Censorship is a terrible thing."

"—We seem to be unable to stay on one topic," the elf observed. "No matter. Talking like this is—pleasant. To return to the discovery that my hurts were transferred to my former owner, it was while I sparred with Carter. A chance blow gashed my arm—I felt the cut for the briefest moment, saw the blood spring out—but by the time I wiped away the blood, before there was any pain, my flesh was whole and unmarked. Two nights later, when we went to the play, there was much discussion of how Danarius had inexplicably been injured, and speculation as to who had landed a lucky hit. The details—when it had happened and where on his person—matched. I have not been seriously injured since. I certainly do not rely on this transference to keep me from harm, as it may cease at any time when my former master realizes what is causing it. I have no delusions of immortality."

"Very wise, my broody friend," Varric wondered if he might sneak a shot from his flask into the cup of tea, and decided not to.

"I am not—never mind," the elf began.

Leandra took up the story, "Well, to return to our departure, Twyla and Aveline accompanied us down to the ship. We said goodbye—it is rather too private for me to share all the details with you, charming as you are. I doubt it was terribly original or that it would interest you very much, anyhow. 'I love you, I'll miss you so much, I'm so very proud of you.'—things like that."

"Your son was churlish in his parting," Fenris said. "She asked him, 'Will you not shake hands and part as friends, for Mother's sake?'

"He said he would not. They had been fighting again, I believe. I do not know what was said."

"_I _know," Leandra said. "On our _last _night together, he was trying to persuade her to come with us, and she would have none of it. His argument was that if she stayed, she would by degrees become desensitized to the decadence of Minrathous, and that running from Templars and the Chantry for the rest of her life would be better for her soul. Then he said she wanted us gone, not for _our_ sake, but so she could behave as badly as she wanted to without us there to get in her way. It would have been better if she had not answered him just as strongly—fair is fair, and the blame is not all on Carver, for Twyla gave as good as she got. It did grieve me that he would not take her hand the day after, and it grieved her too. That is why I was so glad to see you step up, Fenris."

The elf stirred in his seat, "I will not say she had won me over. I had tried to provoke her—I had often been insolent in those past two weeks, and instead of being offended, she found my comments witty. I had never been punished. My sleep went uninterrupted. I missed no meals. She asked nothing of me, and she taught me the rudiments of reading. I still did not entirely believe she meant to free me, that at the last moment she would not prove as mocking and false as Hadriana. Yet the day had come, and there I was on the ship.

"'I would shake hands with you,' I said, and held mine out.

"'Thank you,' she replied and took it, 'my friend.'

"'I do not know what you are,' I told her, 'I would almost believe you were no mage, that you had hoodwinked the Archon and all the magisters, had I not seen you do magic. You find no pleasure in cruelty, you have no interest in power, and I do not understand you.'

"'That's all right. I don't understand me, either.'

"'I would like to believe you will stay who you are now, but if you do not, if you succumb to the lust for more and more power, if you—.' I was at a loss for a moment, flailing.

""If in a year I am up to my elbows in gore and performing blood magic with the rest of them?' she quoted my first words to her.

"'Then I would not hesitate before taking your head off, no more than any other.' I said.

"'Speaking as the person I am at this moment,' she paused. 'if you do, then I will have had no truer friend in this world.'

"I could not reply, so instead I changed the subject. 'Aron tells me you spoke to him of freeing him and keeping him on as a paid retainer. Do not do so too often. It is dangerous. That, to the magisters, would prove more offensive than if you walked up and slew any one of their number in the middle of the Arcanists' Hall, for it cracks the foundation on which their world is built. Slaves are slaves and must remain so. You would be declared insane, your property confiscated, all your dealings and transactions ruled null and void, including manumissions. All for your own good, of course. The mad are not treated well here. Do not let that fate be yours.'

"'I'll remember that. Thank you, Fenris. Had we—.' At that moment, a palanquin traveling as fast as its porters could run rounded the corner and stopped next to the dock. Danarius got out, his face taut and sweating, his arm cradled in a sling.

"'I shall destroy him,' she murmured to me. 'I have not yet worked out how, not without harming a great many others who may be innocent, and _that_ is unacceptable to me. Open combat is not my strong suit.' Raising her voice as he made his way up the gangplank, she said, 'Magister Danarius! How good it is to see you, and how kind you are to come and bid my family farewell with me. I was very sorry to hear you were injured, and I would have sent medicine and fruit as we do in Fereldan, but everyone told me that would be an insult, so I did not. I am glad to see you are recovering so well. Look, Mother, our friend has come to see you and Carver off.' As much as I enjoyed the play, Magistra Hawke's acting was better. It _is_ considered an insult among magisters to underscore that one is infirm, so she was not wrong.

"As when she had bought me, he was taken aback. 'Ah—yes, that is,-' He bade goodbye to you and your son, Serah Leandra, although you did not look as though you appreciated the effort he had made."

Leandra made a scoffing sound. "I wish you had told me before that she means to destroy him. I would have had some suggestions!"

"Be that as it may. He turned back to her. 'I understand you intend to send Fenris along to—.'

"'To Kirkwall, yes, where we have kin,' she replied. 'The voyage is not an easy one, and I think one warrior is not enough. I have given him very strict orders as to the safety of my mother, and what he is to do when he gets there.'

"'I do not think you understand the law,' he said, reining in his temper with an effort. Again, the scene was public, with witnesses. 'When he reaches Kirkwall—.'

"'I fear I _don't _understand,' she replied, looking dismayed as the sixth straight day of rain, 'for I bought him from you. Oh, you are concerned for me! You are so thoughtful. You need not worry, though. After _your_ training and upbringing, I have every confidence that he will carry out my orders to the letter. Is that not so, Fenris?'

"'That is so, Magistra,' I replied. That is another moment which I savor. Among magisters there are many forms of aggression and insults both naked and veiled, but to be stroked with what seems like a feather and turns out to be a razor is rare, and to Danarius, unknown. He hardly knew he bled yet. Had she insulted him or not? Was my compliance a credit to him or an insult?

"Beg your pardons, Messere,' Captain Rivaini broke in, 'but we sail with the tide, and the tide is here. Time to clear my deck, if you would.' The Magistra got into her palanquin, which was on deck, and her porters carried her to the dock, with Aveline by her side as guard. Danarius returned to his, and left shortly there after, but Hawke's remained until we could see it no longer.'

* * *

A/N: Again, short but timely. Next chapter will explain how everyone winds up in one city again.


	11. Big Decisions

"So after all that, how was your trip here?" Varric asked. "Uneventful, I hope?"

Leandra rolled her eyes as Fenris let out a half-laugh. She answered, "Anything but. Twyla chose the Siren's Call because she hoped I might be safer on a ship helmed by a woman, who would know first-hand the dangers women face, but—the whole thing has to be added to the list of my daughter's well-intentioned disasters."

"Why?" the dwarf asked.

"Captain Rivaini is a very striking woman in all senses of the word," Fenris replied. "However, she engages in a sideline of piracy and smuggling."

"Oh. Oh! You know, I think I've seen her around The Hanged Man," Varric recollected. "Bronze skin, wears a white….garment with a blue sash and headscarf, lots of jewelry, several knives, and little else?"

"That's her," the other two said in unison.

"We did arrive in Kirkwall eventually, not much the worse for wear," Leandra told him. "Carver promptly joined a mercenary company, the Red Iron. They have a few women among them, but not in command positions."

"He showed better sense in choosing his arms and armor that I would have thought," Fenris gave credit where it was due, "not for show, nor to show off that he had more money than most who choose such a calling."

"For my part, it was not easy to find my brother," Leandra said, "and while our reunion may not have been all I had hoped for, we did have a nice time reminicing and catching up. You see, I hurt my family very much when I chose to elope with Malcolm. I never saw my parents again, for they died when the twins were only a few days old. They did forgive me before they died, though, which eases my heart a great deal. Gamlen told me Father even left me a small legacy in his will. I'm glad I don't have to rely on that money. As I said earlier, my brother has been unwise. Disastrously so. The legacy, along with everything else, is gone."

"Ah, so that's why you asked me if I was there to collect on his debt," Varric realized.

"Yes." She looked away. "He's living in a hovel in Lowtown now. It's difficult to know what to do. Twyla was quite generous with me, and I would be happy to help him better his situation if I thought it would do some good. I've also been visiting friends and meeting their spouses, their children, and in some cases their grandchildren, things like that. What have you been doing, Fenris?"

"You suggested I consult the Chantry Board for work that would be worth doing, and I did so. In this way, I have not had to withdraw any more money from the bank, and indeed, I have put some coin back. In the process, I have also reunited the lost and the estranged, made places safer, found rare ingredients for apothecaries, and met Sebastian Vael, the Prince of Starkhaven." The elf remarked.

"The Prince of Starkhaven? Really?" Leandra asked, and Varric would eat his own boots if she wasn't thinking _Potential son-in-law on the hoof?_ "What is he like?"

"Ah—," Fenris stalled. "He is very pious, but he is like your daughter, Serah Leandra, in that he cares not whether a person is human, elf or dwarf, slave or free, highborn or low, rich or poor. He is in exile here, and a Chantry Brother. I think he is a good man."

"Interesting…what does he look like?" She leaned forward a little.

"He is about thirty, I think. His hair is red, his eyes are very blue, and he has regular features." Fenris replied.

"Unmarried, then?" she inquired.

"Insofar as I know, yes."

"Then I've an idea. _You'll _lure him down to the docks, and_ I'll_ have Captain Rivaini ambush him and deliver him to Twyla in Minrathous. My daughter may plan to dwindle away into dull spinsterhood as an arcane researcher in her tower, but I want grandchildren. I am not about to let her start gathering dust on a shelf."

"I see a flaw or two in that plan," the frost-headed elf remarked drolly, "First, he is a Chantry Brother, sworn to chastity, and second, if that could be overcome by sufficient feminine charm, then Captain Rivaini may decide to keep him for herself."

"Drat it, you're right," she said, and then laughed.

Fenris smiled slightly in appreciation, then fastened his gaze on the dwarf. "Anyhow, Varric, I ask you now: have you learned enough now to decide whether you will take the offer or not?"

Varric put down his cup and took out the contract. _'__The candidate I seek must have intensive knowledge of double entry accounting, practical and theoretical economics, and self-defense. They must also be able to render covert business dealings utterly untraceable, and be from outside the Imperium. A certain flexibility of mind and morals will be a distinct asset. Expect the work to be, at times, dangerous and disagreeable.'_ he read to himself silently.

He had initially only wanted to hear the story, committed as he was to his brother's planned expedition to the Deep Roads, yet as the tale and the day progressed, he had to admit he was increasingly intrigued—and tempted. The story was unfinished, that was the problem. If he walked away now, he would never learn what happened. Yet there was Bartrand, his only sibling, who was counting on him—or, rather, taking him for granted. The Deep Roads expedition might make them both rich. Or it might fail miserably. It was never about the coin, any how. It was about the story.

What would make for a better story? How often were financial advisors called on to be proficient in self-defense and warned that the job might be dangerous? The usual dangers posed by double-entry accounting were paper cuts and narcolepsy. Varric trusted his instincts.

"Considering what happened to your old owner, I'm going to read this over until my eyes bleed before I sign it. I don't want any obscure clauses biting me in the ass, literally _or _figuratively," Varric said, "but it looks like I'm going to be relocating."

"Very good," Leandra said, smiling serenely. "In which case, I hope you will not object to a traveling companion. I will make my own arrangements regarding passage and appropriate protection, of course."

"You want to go back? Don't you hate the place?" Varric asked.

"Yes, I do, but I love my daughter. I said I would go to Kirkwall. I never said I intended to stay. I met my old friends, who for the most part led the kind of life I ran away from. In consequence, they have turned out to be rather dull and shallow people, which I hope I have not. None of them ever had to scrub a floor or feed five people for a week with nothing but a pound of flour, a handful of salt, and whatever edible plants we could find in the forest. Many of them never even nursed their own babies.

"My son is growing into the man he will be, and he can do that rather better without me than with me, at this point in his life, and my brother—. Knowing that he had no money anymore and no prospects, his creditors never allowed him to dip too deeply into their goodwill, if I may put it that way. Now that he has a well-to-do sister living in the city, one who was already persuaded to settle his debts once—."

Varric winced and Fenris looked thunderous at that pause. "—I foresee that when I refuse him in the future, they will start coming to me directly. Twyla's tower may be minor compared to those of other mage clans, but it still makes for quite a large house, and I will not be in the way—except when I mean to be."

"I see," Varric said. "I will gladly escort you back to your home, my lady."

Fenris had a look on his face as though he had started eating a sandwich and only just discovered half a cockroach in it. "Serah Leandra, you need not hire any bodyguard. I will protect you as I did before."

"Fenris, you can't mean that!" she exclaimed.

"I can and do," he snapped. "If I am free, then I am free to return, and I choose to do so. I am hard put to explain it even to myself, but I—owe your daughter something. Not as repayment for my life or my freedom, but—she always spoke to me and acted toward me as her equal. She shook my hand and called me friend. Knowing what I know of magisters, I know she is in danger. If I am her equal and her friend, and she comes to harm in my absence, than I have failed. As I said, I am hard put to explain it even to myself. Besides," he added with a touch of humor, "if she does destroy Danarius, I want to be there to see it."

There was not much more to be said after that, except for making plans to meet again and hammering out details, the elf and dwarf left the Magistra's mother to return to Lowtown.

"You look like you need something stronger than tea, Broody," Varric commented.

"Venhedis, I am returning to Minrathous of my own volition, so of course I do," Fenris said.

"So do I. Not only do I have to tell my brother I'm bailing on the trip into the Deep Roads, I'm taking a job in another country…So, your Magistra. She really never…summoned you to—."

"To her bed? No. She did not." Fenris replied.

"What if she had?"

"Then I would not be returning to Minrathous now—that did not come out quite right. I would have been disappointed if she had turned out to be yet another mage who uses slaves as they will. I fear she would have been disappointed in me as well."

At Varric's curious glance, he clarified. "If I ever lay with a woman, I have no memory of it, so either I am completely inexperienced or sorely out of practice."

"Hmph. You're...not shy about sharing. I wouldn't let it worry you. I'm sure it'll all come back to you when you least expect it." Words which would prove eerily prophetic, if not exactly in the way he meant it. "You know, I doubt you were illiterate before whatever wiped out your memory. Most people have to look up words like 'volition', they just don't come naturally..." The two continued laying the foundation to what would prove an enduring friendship as they went down the stairs to the lower city.

* * *

A/N: What happened to all of last week? I swear I blinked and it disappeared on me. Thank you so much for all those who have reviewed, favorited, and put my effort on alert. I love hearing from readers. Heck, I love checking back and seeing that the hit count has gone up a hundred in a day!


	12. A Day In The Clinic

Anders unlocked the very strong, stout door to the new clinic, glanced around and inhaled the scents of fresh plaster and paint. Ser Aveline had firmly vetoed his suggestion to use an empty room or suite of rooms in the mage tower itself on the grounds that it would be a security risk, so Hawke had bought a vacant building in the next street. It had been halfway to dilapidated a week ago, but sufficient money was better than any magic when it came to getting certain things done, and Hawke never seemed to care what she spent as long as she got what she wanted.

So now he had a clinic. Of course the replastering was needed, and as long as it was plastered, it might as well be painted, but while it was a nice thought to provide employment for some struggling young fresco artists….the resulting mural was a little over the top. Right there on the wall facing the entrance was a full-size work of art showing the ill, the infirm and the injured, in suitable drab and ragged garb, against a Blighted background, waiting their turn to step into the Fountain of Healing, where they bathed drank and frolicked until they emerged on the other side, healthy and whole, their clothes now clean and colorful amid a pastoral landscape. _With advertising like that, how can I live up to the promise?_

(Three hundred years later, that particular fresco would be hailed as an early masterpiece of the Dragon Age and studied by art scholars all over Thedas, but that was far in the future.)

Other than the artwork, the furnishings were modest, sturdy and practical—several cots screened by canvas panels, easy to remove, wash, and replace. He had a desk and chair, there were benches in the waiting area, a pump and sink for washing up, and an apothecary room with an even sturdier door and locks than the front one.

_Hmmm…unless somebody's been in and strewed the floor with that pricey black-grained rice__** again**__, we've got rats_. He got a broom and started sweeping up rat droppings. _I need a kitten or two around here for rodent control. Two for preference, then they can keep each other company and the rats can't gang up on them. I wonder where Hawke found Mischief and Mayhem? _

The fun provided by two kittens didn't add up to the fun of one kitten plus one kitten, he had learned. It was more like fun quadrupled, between the craziness and the cuteness.

Yes, technically he was still a slave, but having the same status as Aveline and Dagna meant he was free to come and go as he pleased, was waited on by other servants, could dine in his rooms or the servants' hall, or even with Hawke, should she want company. What he needed for his workroom and library, or for the clinic, he got: books, ingredients and reagents, equipment, furniture, even robes and enchanted items.

He had practically everything he needed. Except for one thing: patients. The locals were suspicious.

_Now the question is, when will I have my first patient? Who will be the first brave enough or desperate enough to cross my threshold? _This was the fourth day the clinic had been open, but no one would know it to look at it.

After the first day of idleness, he had bought a deck of cards, so he brought it out, shuffled it, and laid out a game of Free Deal. He was on the third round before he heard the commotion in the street—a lot of shouting, wailing, groaning and even some gabbling. It was headed in his direction—it was headed in his door! A cluster of eight people bore a ninth into the clinic. Fighting his way through the crowd, who were more inclined to bawl at each other than make way for him, he found his first patient was a middle-aged man splattered in fishy-smelling grease. His clothing was singed, and ugly burns spread out over his forehead and pate. Worse than that was the skull fracture underneath the blisters. His brain was bruised, and if the subsequent swelling was not stopped, he might well die of it.

Setting to work, he gleaned from the conversation that Patient No. 1 had been on his way up the stairs to his tenement room when his neighbor opened her door to throw a flaming pan of fish and oil out into the street, striking his patient squarely in the head.

Built of wood and thatched with straw or wooden shingles, the slums of Minrathous were highly flammable places, and cooking was strictly forbidden in the overcrowded tenements where most rooms lacked proper kitchens or fireplaces. However, people still had to eat, so they improvised stoves and braziers and cooking mishaps which burned down entire buildings or blocks were commonplace.

In this case, it was a single man who bore the brunt of it, and it took all Anders' skill and nearly all his strength to lift a bone fragment off the brain and knit the fracture back into wholeness. Then he went to work on the bruise so the swelling in the brain would go down, lest the man suddenly die in the night. The burns, uncomfortable as they were, would have to heal on their own, mostly. Anders was on the brink of exhaustion by then, so he dressed the area with frostrock ointment and a light wrapping of gauze.

Finally, he used Cone of Cold to create a block of ice. "Break off small pieces and wrap them in a towel before you put them on the burns," he told his patient's wife, " and don't leave the ice in any one place on his skin for too long, or you'll freeze the skin. That can be just as bad as a burn in its way." He broke off as inspiration hit. The moles and the precancerous lesions on the skin of those burned by the explosion, Hawke foremost among them—removing them safely was painstaking and difficult. But what if he were to reduce the area affected by Cone of Cold into something the size of a palm-print, or small still, like a coin, and freeze the tissue? It would solve so many problems…

However, the patient's wife was still there in front of him, twisting her hands in her apron. "…reapply the frostrock salve twice a day, and here is extra gauze as well. Never reuse the gauze or let it drop on the floor. Dirt and infection go together."

"Thank yee, Healer," the woman bobbed, "-but we've na coin nor nothing else to pay you with."

"You need none," he told her. "Think of this clinic and my services as Magistra's Hawke's gift to you."

"Magistra Hawke—she's the one what fixed the akkeducks an' made the fountains flow again, inn't she?" the woman asked.

"Yes, she is" he replied, although it took a split second to translate 'akkeducks' into 'aqueducts'. Without the aqueducts and fountains, the only water available to most of the population was well water and ground water, usually tainted by sewage and the source of several diseases. By providing clean, reliable water, Hawke had greatly improved the quality of life in the vicinity.

"Ah, that's summin different then. Mostly those polleetical ones, they gives ye more grain dole and puts on some of the games at the Ampytheeter. Good watter and a healer in th' district, that could fetch the votes in." Again, mental translation was needed.

"I don't believe the Magistra is motivated by any political ambitions," he ventured. "I think all she wants to do is survive."

"Same difference, inn't?" the woman asked. "Thank yee again, Healer. My oldeest gal is big enough to push a broom an' swipe a cloth. I'll be sending her round to tidy up yer place now-then."

At midday, 'Nia brought his lunch from the tower kitchens on a tray. Today it was a good-sized portion of cold poached salmon topped with a tangy sauce, two scoops of brown rice, some pickled cabbage (ugh!) and a small salad of cucumber chunks, orange segments, and slices of ginger. "Oh, this looks good." he said, smiling down on the dishes.

One of the many surprises of life in the Hawke household was that everybody ate the same, whether it was simple fare or haute cuisine, although it offended Aron's sense of what was fitting. Partly this was due to Hawke's principles, but mostly it was Aveline's precautions against poison. Nobody could poison Hawke's portion when they didn't know which it was, and nobody would poison a plate of food they themselves might wind up eating.

Sadly, the precautions weren't just Ser Aveline being ridiculously overprepared. Only a few days before, a huge basket of lotions, creams and other toiletries had arrived from a well known apothecary's shop with their card affixed, supposedly as a gift to gain her custom in the future. He had checked it at the bodyguard's request. It had been full of toxins that were easily absorbed through the skin.

"Do you mind if I, uh, come back for it later, when you're done?" 'Nia asked.

He gave her a glance. Red haired and elven, 'Nia was hired rather than owned. Pathetic and odd though it was, despite the fact that the city was full of the free poor, unemployed and dependent on the handouts of grain from the magisters in their individual districts, very few of them were willing to take jobs that were normally done by slaves, even with room, board and clothing thrown in. Hawke's attempts to employ such people had not proven very successful. Some were scouts for burglars; others simply nicked things where and as they could. One very memorable woman, middle-aged and more than middling plain, had got into the wine before she tried on all of Hawke's clothes, leaving them in little piles all over the floor. Finally she had passed out drunk in Hawke's bed, naked except for the Magistra's jewelry.

'Nia was, thus far, the only one who had worked out for more than two weeks. Several months into her employment now, all _she_ stole were a few extra hours here and there, and the gossip in the household was that she had a secret sweetheart somewhere. Since she did get through a lot of work, Aron was inclined to overlook her habits, and Anders was sympathetic too. "Sure. I'll leave the tray on the desk." He smiled.

"Thanks," she said. Pity that she was so dour…

His next patient—it seemed that the floodgates had finally opened—was a four-year-old boy who had tripped and grazed his knee while playing that morning, and it had gotten infected, one of the devastating fast infections that swelled his joint up to the size of a dirda melon, the cut oozing yellow pus and angry red tendrils reaching up to the groin and down to the ankle. Had his granny waited much longer, Anders might have had to send for a barber-surgeon to take the leg, but after draining and cleaning the injury, he made the appropriate potions and ointments before sending the lad home with his grandmother. Then there was a mother whose baby had colic…

It was good to work, good to keep busy and not dwell on his emotional life, complicated as it was by an unrequited love for Hawke. He could go minutes without dwelling on her.

The afternoon sun was turning gold before he turned around and realized his lunch tray was still sitting on his desk, and unfortunately, a good-sized rat was clearing up the remains. He fried it with a fireball. _What's going on? That Varania—where **does** she skive off to? See if I say "Sure" the next time she asks. Anyhow, I am definitely getting those kittens._

* * *

A/N: Wow, thanks for all the responses to the last chapter! To Shinkshinkshink, Enchanter T.I.M. Glysmari, NoMadKa, Bloodyorchid, White Ivy, and Golden Naginata: Thank you, thank you, and thank you. Love ya!


	13. Thicker Than Water

When Anders returned to the tower after shutting the clinic for the evening, (bringing the tray forgotten by the negligent 'Nia with him), and went down the winding stairs into Hawke's underground workspace, he got rather a shock. "_**Blood magic**_**?** _You're_ studying blood magic?"

Hawke shook her head. "Not blood _magic_. Blood _itself_." She wore vivid colors and enticing fabrics elsewhere, but in her workshop, as now, she and Dagna wore very plain undyed cotton smocks, sometimes over other protective gear. "What is it made of? We need enough of it in our veins to live, but why? Why are demons drawn to it? And, since demons are drawn to it, why is every female mage between the ages of fifteen and fifty not hemmed in by them to the point where she can't move when she has her menses? You're a healer—surely you have some insights into the last question."

He blinked, feeling his own blood rush to his face. "I don't know…I can honestly say the question has never been addressed in any tome I ever read."

"He's blushing!" Dagna, Hawke's dwarven assistant pointed out. "It's all right. There's not a lot about a woman's monthlies in any tome, and what we've found is mostly nonsense anyway."

"That's because most of the books are written either by men or by Chantry Sisters," Hawke complained. "The first are afraid to touch the subject literally _or_ figuratively, and the second are inclined to treat it as a holy mystery. Bosh. It's connected to our physical bodies and part of the physical world, and so there's an explanation beyond 'In order to receive the Maker's holy blessing and conceive a child, the female body must purge itself of impurity by shedding blood even as the Holy Andraste bled before she was taken into the Maker's arms as his Holy Bride.'

"For one thing, babies were being conceived for a long time before Andraste ever came along, and I doubt the method of making them has changed _that_ much, and for another, the reason she bled was because Hessarian stabbed her to put her out of her misery."

"I don't know the Chant," Dagna's brow furrowed. "Does it say where this Hessarian stabbed her? Because if it was through the—."

"It was through the heart!" Anders put in hastily. "As a healer, however, I can tell you that every month in her childbearing years, a woman's womb grows a thick lining that, um, acts as soil for seed. That is, a man's—If she's healthy, that is. It takes a couple of weeks to grow, then it…waits, and if no seed is planted, then it deteriorates and is shed. Like an apple blossom that doesn't develop into an apple just dies and falls off, but the next year the tree flowers again. Mostly it's made up of blood vessels, and, well, blood."

"You _are_ bright red," Dagna chortled, pointing at his face. "My father would have fainted by now, though, so you're doing well. Come here and have a look through the micro-seer. I forged the parts and we worked on the design together. This isn't 'shed blossoms', it's just regular old blood, but it's fascinating."

He gingerly approached the apparatus, which looked a bit like a telescope and a bit like a miniature wine press and had a tiny mirror on a pivot at the bottom.

"That was a very good explanation of menses," Hawke told him, writing something down. "Much better than I've found in any of these books. Thank you. Now, blood is mostly water, but there are particles swimming in that water. Take a look, it's quite all right. This is blood magnified to six hundred times its normal size."

He applied his eye to the obvious part. What he saw looked a bit like clear soup with a lot of carrot coins in it, perhaps a few other things as well.

"The round red discs are what I call 'worker particles'," she explained. "You know how a peeled apple changes color when the air hits it? Worker particles turn bright red when they go through the lungs or touch the open air, and then gradually go blue on their return voyage. They also get very dark red when they pick up digested food from the intestines, and pale after distributing it."

"You seem to know a_ lot_ about it," Anders observed, looking up from the micro-seer at her face. She was sitting forward, alert as a cat who hears a mouse stirring in tall grass—a far cry from the languorous creature who lounged amid pillows in her tower. This, her research, stirred an unfathomable passion in her, and it was not enough for her to keep it to herself. She burned with an irresistible urge to share what she knew. Fortunately, it touched on his own areas of expertise.

"I've a talent for perceiving things at a level others can't. It's one of my few real capabilities. I'm really not much of a mage—but I 'm a precise one, at least. The micro-seer is for when I present my findings at the Arcanists' Hall. My fellow magisters will want to see proof. Ah, there, those colorless blobs—I know they look like they're out lined in dark blue and have blue stringy bits in them, but I had to dye them to make them show—those are 'soldier particles'. When they find an invading infection, they attack it and die protecting the body. As a healer, I know you've encountered more than your fair share of pus—well, pus is made up of dead soldier particles.

"Finally, the plate-shaped bits are 'spinners'. When blood comes into contact with the open air, they start spinning sticky little threads to bind the worker particles together and solidify them—clots and scabs to stop the bleeding."

"Really?" He stared. Yes, he saw a soldier particle ooze over to something smaller than itself, something that quivered and whipped around. It wrapped itself around the whippy thing like a guard subduing a prisoner.

"You were born the wrong race," Dagna said to Hawke. "You were meant to be born a dwarf, only something went awry. If you _were_ a dwarf, you'd be a Paragon by now. This is an important discovery!"

"More likely I'd be exiled to the surface for heretical notions," she replied. "Anyhow, the point is, there is nothing inherently magical about blood itself. The reason we need it is because it carries food and fresh air through the body to keep it alive, and I_ think_ when it passes through the kidneys, it gets purified. Kidneys are very complicated things. I haven't dissected nearly enough of them yet."

"You've been…cutting up kidneys," Anders asked. The whole business was still suspect and even nauseating.

"_Lamb_ kidneys," she explained. "I'm no necromancer. I'm not going to start doing that to_ people_, but I don't see that cutting animal kidneys up to study them is any worse than grilling them and eating them, which we do all the time. Blood is blood, bodies are bodies, and we're not as different from animals or each other as you'd think. The Maker wasn't very creative in some ways. Dwarf blood is identical to human blood, for example. Fish blood is different, though. Remember the white trevally fish we had for dinner the other night? It arrived alive, and I had the cook drain off some blood when she killed it. Also, I've got a wax model of a sheep's heart that's very useful in picturing how blood is pumped through the body…

"Anyway, I can tell you that neither my sister nor I were ever especially pestered by demons when we had our menses, so what I suspect is this: that it is not blood which draws demons, but the cutting and shedding of it—the pain, fear, and other intensely negative emotions that are born of the act."

"Can it really be that simple?" Anders asked. "How did you draw the blood you're studying, if not by cutting and pain?"

"That was_ my_ part," Dagna interrupted, holding up a syringe. "I forged these new needles, extra fine and very, very sharp. You can hardly feel them go in, now."

"Really? May I have a look at that?," the healer asked, holding out a hand. "This could… be very useful in treatments. I mean, there are times I'd like to be able to get a potion or medicine right down inside where the problem is. Do you have more of them?"

"A few. Just make sure to take them apart and boil them between uses." Dagna cautioned, taking down a syringe in a wooden box and handing it to him.

"I will," he promised. "As far as what draws demons—as I said, it seems too simple to be true that it isn't really blood which draws them. I would suggest speaking to an actual blood mage about it, if you can find one who isn't completely vicious, power-hungry and self-serving. In my experience, that rules out all of them."

Hawke smiled in appreciation. "Well, as long as I'm looking for the impossible, I'd like it if they were elven, so we can compare their blood to that of humans and dwarves, and a woman, so we can discuss menses as well as demons."

"Better you than me," he quipped. "About demons—how much _do_ they trouble you?"

The question surprised her. She waved a hand vaguely. "Sometimes…like mosquitoes. Usually there's so much going on that I don't notice them, but then when I'm trying to get to sleep, the whining starts, and I have to shoo them away. I don't think they find me very interesting."

_Or it could be that they have trouble keeping up with you_, Anders thought. _I certainly do_. It was not modesty, either true or false, that caused her to rate her magic abilities as limited. She was one of those who could barely light a candle, although she was good with wards and could perceive things too small for others to see. What made her formidable, and she _was_ formidable, was not her magic, but her mind.

* * *

A/N: Next Chapter will have Fenris, Leandra and Varric plus two mystery companions arriving in Minrathous! Also, I would be remiss if I did not thank Shinkshinkshink for her plug for Bought and Sold. I am still working my way through her stuff, but it is fun, fun, fun.


	14. Hadriana

"Ye-es," Danarius stretched the word out into two syllables, lowering his staff as he did so. "I believe you're ready. Rather more than ready, I should think. Twyla Hawke has only a handful of tricks, remember, and never mind her reputation. When not on her own ground, her wards will not be half as effective. You can defeat her, and when she is no more than a grease spot on the floor, I shall adopt you as my daughter and my heir."

Hadriana nearly wriggled in glee at hearing those words. "Nothing could give me greater joy, Magister Danarius," she demurred, casting her eyes down.

"My informant sent word that she will be at the Palatine Gynnasia this afternoon. Be sure not to miss her." Dismissing his apprentice with a wave of his hand, Danarius left the courtyard.

The Palatine Gynnasia? That was probably the most expensive spa in Minrathous, and they didn't sell day passes. It was a year's fees up front, or no admission at all. Hadriana could not afford it—well, she had the money, but not to spare…Yet after that day's work, she would be Danarius' heir, and as his heir, would be extended nearly unlimited credit. Yes, it would be all right. Hadriana hurried off to ready herself for the fray.

A few hours later, after enjoying the Palatine's facilities and services, she waited in the reception area for the Fereldan upstart to arrive. Hawke was in no hurry to meet her doom, it seemed. It was the third hour of the afternoon before her palanquin passed through the marble arches and her maidservant Orana (who Danarius had promised to give to Hadriana months before, another grudge against the doglord wench) opened the door for Hawke to step down.

The spa staff jumped to greet her, and Hadriana took a moment to consider how, even if you had a muddy complexion and a flat wide nose set in a flat wide face over a fat wide mouth (as Hawke did, not that Hadriana was biased or anything) everyone would still praise your beauty—as long as you had all the money in the world to make up for it. Getting to her feet, she strolled over to the cluster of people around Hawke, and said, "_Good _day, Magistra—my, you do have all the dress sense of a Chasind washerwoman, don't you?"

Hawke looked absolutely delighted to see her. "Hadriana!" she said happily. "I didn't know you frequented the Palatine. I fear you are right, and that's assuming the Chasind even have washerwomen. I am still too new to the city to know which are the best shops and what is appropriate. What _I _need is some kind person to take me in hand and keep me from embarrassing myself further. Are you free next Soliday?"

"As if I'd be seen anywhere with you," Hadriana spat. How did one provoke someone to a challenge when that person was determined to be nice and acted like you were equally friendly?

Not that way, it seemed. "Oh, dear, am I that gaudy?" Hawke looked down at her clothes, which consisted of a turquoise linen dress, a head scarf striped in aqua, cobalt, more turquoise, and apple green, and a belt of tooled silver links. There was not much difference between the shade of turquoise she wore and Hadriana's sky blue robes. "Then you shall have to come over beforehand and pick out what I should wear. Come early—that way we can lunch together before we go out."

Why was her head starting to feel strange? Pure and simple rage? "You—you nug-headed sow, can't you even tell when you're being insulted?"

Hawke looked stricken, but then her face cleared. "Hadriana, is this your first visit to the Palatine?"

"Yes—what of it?"

"Then you won't have realized how draining the steam room can be when you're not used to it. You are not yourself. Someone, please, fetch Miss Hadriana a pitcher of water—no, juice would be better—and an ice pack. Just sit down here, and you'll soon feel much better. Danarius might forgive me, but I would _never_ forgive myself if you made yourself ill." Hawke took her hand and put an arm around Hadriana's shoulder as if she were frail and old, drawing her toward the chair.

"You fool! He despises you beyond measure and he wants you dead!" Light headed, so light headed, she was dizzy.

"Quick!" the Fereldan cried out. "Get a chair over here, I think she's going to fai—." Whatever else she might have said was lost on Hadriana as she passed out.

She came to with her head in someone's lap and icy water trickling down her forehead. "No, don't try to get up," someone said. She tried to focus her eyes. Ocean colors, somebody's face… "Ha—Hawke!" she stammered, trying to scramble away. "Don't-don't touch me! What did you do to me?"

Hawke was stronger than she looked, and her grip on Hadriana's arms was unbreakable. "Delirious, as I said. I caught you before your head hit the ground, that's all. If you get up now, you'll only fall over again, but if you can sit up a little, and drink this—."

"No!"

"It's all right, see?" Hawke took a big swallow of the misty liquid.

"_Poor _thing," someone else murmured. Looking around, Hadriana saw that they were in the center of a ring of faces all wearing polite masks of sympathy and concern. She could see the little darts of amused malice they gave each other, enjoying her plight. Weakness, she must not show more weakness, these were daughters, sisters, wives from the most powerful Magisterial families... Shoving down her panic, she drank from the glass Hawke held to her lips. It was lemonade, only lemonade.

"What happened?" she asked when the glass was empty.

"You spent too long in the steam room without drinking enough to make up for what you perspired, that's all," Hawke explained. "You'll be fine, but I think you should go home and lie down in a cool dark room for the rest of the day and drink as much as you want."

Someone tittered at that, and she hastily added, "Nothing alcoholic, though. That would only dehydrate you more. How did you get here? A rented chair? That won't do, the porters are never careful enough. You must take mine. Here, have another glass of lemonade…"

The truth was that Hadriana did feel rather sick and lightheaded, even then, and the problem was that Hawke's explanation might even be the truth. Hadriana _had _spent a long time in the steam room without drinking very much, but she had felt fine right up until the time…until the time…until she had stood up and insulted Hawke.

Was it an attack that didn't look like an attack, an attack she hadn't even noticed until she passed out? Or had she just stupidly weakened herself with that long leisurely session in the spa?

Hawke was tenderly helping her to her feet with as much care as if Hadriana was her sister. As she was handing her into the palanquin, she said, softly and pitched for Hadriana's ears alone, "You said some rather wild things before you fainted, and I will never speak of them after today. I do want you to know that Master Danarius's friendship with me and my family is no threat to your position with him. You're his apprentice. He's just been kind to someone who is new and unsure of herself. I hope that you and I will become just as good friends as he and I are. Now go rest and take care of yourself." She squeezed Hadriana's hand, shut the palanquin door, and stepped back to make room for the chair.

What had just happened? Was Hawke simply so very kind and caring that she believed nothing but good of everyone? Or was she really someone so subtle and sophisticated that she could slip behind all Hadriana's defenses to incapacitate her without anyone noticing, Hadriana least of all?

Then the reality of it hit Hadriana, sickening her to the point where she was on the verge of vomiting. If she had challenged Hawke and been killed, if she had even come back bruised, bloodied, beaten and burned, yet alive—well, Danarius would not be pleased, but he would have seen that she had made the effort. Coming back like this, without a mark on her to show for it, in his enemy's own palanquin, to report that she had fainted before the duel ever began…

It was utter humiliation. Even if she protested that Twyla Hawke had overcome her with a trick, some unknowable power, she was discredited, and before the eyes of all those women, women of his circle. They would talk, she knew it.

It would have been kinder if Hawke had killed her outright.

* * *

A/N: This is not the chapter I promised last time, but I hope it will amuse you while I work on something of greater substance and length. Hope you enjoyed it!


	15. The Return to Minrathous

_'Let me not have the pain of knowing I have condemned those I love to live here too.'_

It was a statement which would never be forgotten, not by Fenris, at least. _Was I included among them? Could she—does she—? Surely not._

_This is folly beyond madness. She is human, a mage, a__magister__. She set me free on a whim and now I have willingly put my neck back in the collar, and for what? Nothing, probably_. He reached out for the bell-pull and yanked hard. _Let there be one good and true mage in this world, and let it be her, and Maker, I shall forgive You for all the rest_.

What with one thing and another, two months had passed since the day he, Leandra, and Varric had met, and Fenris was not happy about certain developments, such as the two strays they had picked up along the way. Stray mages, and one of them a blood mage…While neither had done anything wrong yet, the operative word there was _yet_. Speaking of 'yet', why had no one answered the bell? He yanked again.

What would he say to her when he saw her again? What would _she_ say to _him_? Would he know the truth when he saw her face, her reaction?

"Could they have all gone to the estate?" Leandra stuck her head out of the rented palanquin. After discussing it, they had decided not to let Hawke know that she was getting more than a financial advisor. She was resourceful, and if she knew her mother and her…bodyguard? What was he going to be, now? If she knew they intended to return, she might find a way to prevent them. What she did not know about, she could not stop. Unfortunately, that meant they couldn't inform her about the other two.

"No," he replied to her question. "There would still be caretakers in residence, as there were before she took possession. A tower left empty is an invitation to thieves and squatters." He pulled a third time.

"Oh—ah—who is it?" someone asked from within. A woman's voice, and not one he knew.

"Magistra Hawke's mother, newly returned from Kirkwall, Master Varric Tethras, who is to take the post of financial advisor to the household, Merrill of the Dalish and Feynriel of Kirkwall, both mages who seek the Magistra's protection, and I, Fenris, bodyguard to the Magistra's family," he stated.

"OH!" exploded the voice, and he heard the heavy door bars ratcheting back. "Just a moment." This was wrong…whoever was on the other side of the door should have opened the small panel and verified their identity before letting them in, and at least one of the porters should have been standing by with a heavy cudgel. Instead the gates swung open to reveal a red-headed elven woman in the clothes of a housemaid.

"Why did you just open the gate?" he demanded, glowering at her.

"I—you wanted to come in, and—."

"That is not acceptable. Where is the porter?"

"In—in the privy—." She gestured. "I was passing by and—."

"What's all this about then?" Aron, father of Orana, bustled out of a side door to ask the question. While Fenris had been scolding the housemaid, the hired porters had brought in Leandra's chair and now she stepped down. "Mistress Leandra! What are you doing here? We weren't expecting you, or at least the Magistra never said—."

"I _knew_ the letter must have gone astray!" she replied ingenuously. (Fenris had observed that Hawke had inherited a lot more from her mother than her figure.) "Otherwise Twyla would surely have been there to greet us. This is Varric, who's our new financial advisor, the young lady climbing the pillar to look at the vines is Merrill, and the young man who is trying to be invisible is Feynriel."

"I'm sure I saw a hummingbird among the flowers!" Merrill called from her precarious hold.

"They are to be the Magistra's assistants?" Aron asked.

"No," Fenris stated as Leandra replied, "Possibly."

"I think that is for the Magistra to decide," Varric put in diplomatically.

"Yes—Varania, where do you think you're haring off to now? This is the Magistra's mother, and the house isn't ready! There are rooms to be turned out, the baths need to be fired up, and the cook needs to be told there will be five more for the foreseeable future! Round up Belen and Torchylda—and Iulia too. Ah, Iorvus, there you are. Why weren't you at the door? Oh? Well, we told you not to eat so many figs or that would happen." After issuing several other orders, he finally turned back to the arrivals.

"I regret your daughter is not in at the moment, Mistress. She has gone to the Gynnasia. Ser Aveline accompanied her, of course, and Miss Dagna, who is her assistant, as I think you know. Orana is now the Magistra's personal attendant, so she went also. They should return soon; the dinner hour draws near. Would you like the suite you had before? It has been redecorated, but I hope the changes will be to your liking."

"That will be fine, thank you." Leandra nodded, with a smile.

"Start with the northern-view suite first," he told a passing maid, "Use the_ best_ sheets, and ask Pol for some flowers. Now, Master Tethras, we have no spare underground rooms fixed up for occupation tonight, but we can cover the windows on an above-ground suite. Miss Dagna made us known of what is required…"

"No need to go to any trouble about screen or fixing up the basement," Varric waved off the suggestion. "I was born a surfacer, and I'd miss light and air. I may decide to find my own place eventually, but seeing as I'm new in town, whatever you choose will do me just fine."

"Very good, sir. As for Miss Merrill and Master Feynriel—."

"I can just stay in the garden," Merrill dropped back down to the ground. "It's nice and warm, and if it comes on to rain, I'll just move my bedroll under where the balcony comes out. The flowers are very happy here, and I think I will be too."

"Ah. Would you perhaps accept a ground floor room that opens out to the garden?" Aron asked very carefully. "That way you would have somewhere to put your things, and you could leave the door open to, ah, talk to your friends."

Her brow furrowed in thought. "Yes, that is sensible. I wouldn't want people to trip over the Eluvian. Thank you."

"I will take anything," the young man said hastily. "Please, I don't want to be any trouble."

"Too late," Fenris muttered to himself. Out loud he said, "From your livery and how you issue orders, Aron, I think you must now be the steward, rather than merely the cook."

"This is true. The Magistra honored me with both the promotion and my freedom—although I keep a special eye on the kitchens, you can be sure. Now, if you all will care to follow me, the impluvium is always nice and cool, and I shall bring refreshments to you there."

Leandra and the others followed the steward to a stone-tiled room with a shallow pool of water in the center and seating arranged around it. Fenris did not take a seat, but followed the other elf back to the kitchen, where the cook was panicking about feeding five more. Aron calmed her, made suggestions as to how to make dinner stretch, and went about the task of putting together a tray with fruit, cheese, and chilled tea.

"You—have not considered leaving to work elsewhere?" Fenris asked him as the steward sliced rounds of crusty bread off a baguette. What he wanted to ask most was: _Has she changed?_ _Is she just another magister now?_

"No." Aron drew himself up. "Why would I? I'm in charge of running the household, my daughter is here, the Magistra relies on me—besides, as we both know, compared to what we were accustomed to, this is the Golden City, here. Hey, it's good you're back—Ser Aveline has had her hands full."

"There have been attempts on her life?" Fenris tensed.

"Yes. Poison, mostly, but there was a telescope the Magistra ordered that had a surprise in it when it came—a spring loaded spike in the eyepiece that would have put her eye out if not killed her. Also, these free people she insists on hiring, they're too much of a risk, besides mostly being worthless and thieves to boot. There was a gardener who tried to stab her, that was three weeks ago—Orana brained him but good with a potted peony, so we never learned if he was a random nutter, a hired blade, or ensorcelled by somebody.

"I tell you, if I hadn't persuaded the Magistra that there were lots of young people among the slave families who conveyed with the estate who ought to be given a chance to better themselves here, this place would be fallen into rack and ruin. There's only been the one hired who's worth the pay, and that's Varania—no surprise that she was slave-born." Aron frowned at the tray he had prepared and arranged the grapes more appealingly. Picking it up, he left the kitchens, Fenris still in his wake.

"She was the one who opened the gate." Fenris stated. "She should not have. Such a person should not stay in the Magistra's employ."

"What?" Aron asked, and Fenris explained in full as they went down the hall. "You're right, that was risky and wrong. I'll talk to her about it. She won't do it again. I can't go firing her on account of that—we'll be short-handed even worse now."

"What would you say to taking on a bright twelve-year-old girl who's washed dozens of potion bottles for me without breaking any? Her father was my first patient, and I know the family could use the money." Fenris turned to look at who had spoken. It was an offensively tall and handsome human man with a tiny, cream colored kitten perched on his shoulder.

"Who is that?" Fenris asked the steward.

"'That' is Anders, and the Magistra bought me a couple of months ago," the human replied.

"To do what?" Fenris bristled at the man's easy charm, and the kitten fluffed itself up in response at the hostile tone.

"It's all right, Thistledown," the man crooned to it. "As her concubine, what else?"

"Like_** hell**_ you are!" Fenris spat.

"What's the matter?" Leandra came to peer into the hallway. Once Anders understood that this was the Magistra's _mother,_ he left off pretending to be a living sex toy.

"I'm one of her assistants, actually. Mage, cat attendant, and healer at her free clinic. I also check everything that comes into the house for tampering," he explained to the fascinated company. "I do not have the honor of being her…anyhow, that's something I tell people should they ask_ rudely_. I am _delighted_ to meet the woman who has so improved the world by not only being in it herself, but bringing Twyla Hawke into it as well."

Fenris had to turn his face away in disgust.

"But who are these others?" asked the mage. _Mage_. _**Another**__ mage_…

Lenadra performed introductions. When she got to Merrill (who had persuaded a hummingbird to come into the house and perch on her finger and was now crooning to it), Anders looked a little astonished. "You—wouldn't happen to be a _blood_ mage by any chance, would you?"

"Only my _own _blood," she explained. "Not other people's. It wouldn't be right."

"The Magistra will be very glad to make_ your_ acquaintance," he said, still looking a little dazed.

"I shall be very glad to make hers," the Dalish elf replied. "Asha'bellanar said some very interesting things about her. She was quite surprised that she wasn't there. She said it was the first time that had ever happened."

"Who was surprised that who wasn't where?" Anders asked.

At that moment, the gate bars rumbled, the catches clanged, and the porter announced. "The Magistra has returned!"

* * *

A/N: This takes place the same day that Hawke royally p'wns Hadriana, and that event will be much discussed.


	16. What She Deserves

Lacking the courage to go straight back to Danarius, Hadriana ordered the bearers to carry her to her favorite tea house, where she demanded a private room and a pot of one of their special blends, one which contained a mild euphoric, guaranteed to lift the spirits when used in moderation. Two pots later, she had recovered enough to snap at the waitresses and shortchange them on the way out. Since she had not dared to keep Hawke's palanquin waiting, she hired one off the street and was borne off to the mage tower she had called home ever since Danarius had agreed to take her on.

The tea, or rather the drug within the tea, had done its work a little too well. It was false confidence which buoyed her on her way. She would tell Danarius she had planned what had happened that day, to lull Hawke into trusting her, the better to ferret out her secrets for his benefit. Yes, that would satisfy him—or it would, once she knew whatever Hawke did—how she had defeated the Qunari, how she manipulated the growth of plants, how to transmute lyrium. That would be a prize worth having! But once she knew whatever that hateful cow knew, would she even need Danarius?

As the rented chair approached the tower, she noticed with disgust that there was a great heap of rubbish in the middle of the street. It looked like a load of second hand clothing and other things intended for some Chantry charity had fallen off a cart or something. There were even people picking through the pile and taking what they wanted. Disgraceful!

Well, here was something she could take care of for Danarius. Whatever had happened, the cart driver should not have gone off leaving everything in the middle of the street for the riff-raff to pick over.

Then she recognized the braided trim on a robe hanging over an old woman's arm. It was hers. All of the things in the street were hers. Word of what had happened had reached Danarius before she did. Rather than bothering to discipline her or even speak to her, he had simply thrown her out.

* * *

A/N: Because it was a horrible week for writing, a drabble of a chapter. Sorry. Working on the next.


	17. The Reunion

Voices, a little too far away to hear words, then, astonished, "—My mother is _here_? Where?" Footsteps, hurrying down the hall. "Mother!" She still eschewed mage robes , Fenris observed. He had forgotten that they were almost exactly the same height. She had teased him once that he would be taller if he only didn't slouch. Where did he belong in this family reunion? Nowhere, he realized. Not at this moment , at least. He stepped back into the shadows, skirted the room so as not to intrude.

"Mother, what are you doing here?" Hawke shook her head, her eyes wide with astonishment.

Leandra got up to meet her child midway, taking her hands. "Twyla, darling, how I've missed you! I'm here because your brother is in the process of growing up, and because your uncle never did. You're thinner than I remember—have you been ill? What—_what_ did you do to your **_hair_**?"

Hawke reached up to remove her scarf, revealing bare scalp, and smiled sheepishly. No, not entirely bare scalp, for the skin was painted or tattooed with dark brown flourishes and scrolls, flowers and vines. Rather than diverting attention from her face, being hairless emphasized her fine eyes and the curve of her cheekbones, he thought.

Twyla Hawke was not_ pretty_—no one would call her pretty. The Maker had drawn her features with lines too bold and strong for her to be merely pretty. Whether she was beautiful or not...one person might say, 'yes', another 'no'. Neither would be wrong.

He would say yes.

Hawke explained, "I wasn't prepared for the climate here. About a month ago, it got very humid. There were rainstorms every day, but they only made it worse. You know what happens to my hair when it's too humid, it just frizzes up and traps the heat. One very sticky night, I was on the verge of going mad, so I took a pair of shears and went snip! It looked so terrible that everybody agreed I might as well just shave my head and start over, so I did."

"But that was a month ago, and this is freshly shaved," Leandra reached up and stroked her daughter's head with the tenderness she must have used when she nursed the infant Twyla at her breast. "But I do remember how you used to fuss in the summers, and it _is_ so much hotter here. Still, to go so far as to get tattooed! What are these markings, anyhow? Not vallaslin, surely."

"It stayed humid, so I kept it shaved, and now it has become the fashion," she shrugged. "The design isn't a tattoo, it's only a dye made from an herb called lausona. It wears off. What's 'vallaslin'?"

"Ah, you haven't met Merrill yet, nor Varric or Feynriel. Here—." Aveline and a dwarven girl, no doubt 'Miss Dagna', had followed Hawke and joined in the introductions.

Fenris made an unnoticed exit into the hallway._ I am a servant again, after all_.

Further down the hall, he heard sobbing, and _this_ voice he knew. "—oh, Poppa, I was so fuh, fuh, _frightened_. I was sure Mistress Hadriana was going to _kill_ her, and we'd all have to go back—."

"There, there, my girl, it's all right. The Magistra's safe and sound, nothing happened to her at all." Aron comforted his daughter. "But what happened? What did Hadriana do? Did she challenge the Magistra?"

Orana hiccupped. "Yes-well, she was going to, I think. We'd just got to the Gynnasia, and Mistress Hadriana was waiting in the receiving hall. Her smile was all tight and shiny like when she was…disciplining one of us. She looked so happy. Then she started saying things, awful things, to the Magistra, like how she looked like a washerwoman—and you know the Magistra looked beautiful."

"That's because_ you_ do your job well, my girl. So she was going by the Code Duello, was she? Working her way up to the Grand Insult…How did the Magistra take it?" Aron asked.

"It was like she thought Mistress Hadriana was her friend, and only teasing her. I so much wanted to go up and whisper in her ear that Hadriana wasn't teasing, and she wasn't her friend—_Mistress_ Hadriana, I mean," Orana said. "But I couldn't—I was so afraid."

"Hadriana is not your mistress," Fenris caught up to the family grouping. "If you must use that word, reserve it for someone worthy of it."

"Oh, Fenris, it's you!" Orana exclaimed. "You're back."

"The Magistra's lady mother has returned too," Aron said.

"That's good. She was always very lovely and kind," Orana said. "I know the Magistra missed her."

"What then did the Magistra do?" Fenris pressed.

"She didn't get angry. Even when Hadriana said even worse and worse things, she still didn't get angry. She said that Master Danarius wanted the Magistra dead, and our lady was still sweet to her. Then Hadriana _fell down_. She just fainted. Not because the Magistra attacked her—I don't _think_—I couldn't tell."

"Hah!" Aron slapped his thigh. "That beats all, it truly does. Listen, my girl, the Magistra knows that Hadriana isn't her friend and that Danarius isn't either. Maybe the Archon is, and maybe he isn't, as he's a tricky fellow. She knows not to rely on him. No, the only people in this city who are truly her friends are inside these tower walls right now. You needn't worry about her. Now go put her bath things away, the dinner hour is getting nigh."

He watched her disappear around a corner, shaking his head, then said to Fenris in an undertone, "It's true she's none too bright, but she is my own. And she _is_ doing better than she was, in many ways."

"She was frightened of her own shadow when I left, so I would agree." Fenris could be diplomatic. Then he noticed the red-headed elf woman lurking around the fringe of ear-shot, and jerked his head at Aron.

"Yes, Varania, what is it?" Aron asked. There was something indefinable about that woman which bothered Fenris. For one thing, she looked shocked, disturbed.

"We've made rooms ready for everyone except for_ him_," she indicated Fenris with a thrust of her chin. "Where will he be lodging? In the servant's quarters, or—elsewhere?" There was a world of implications in that word 'elsewhere'.

"The answer is simple." He spoke up for himself. "I am the Magistra's bodyguard; you will put me so that anyone who would do her harm must go through me first."

"That would be in the tall tower," Aron said. "There's rooms enough on the same level where Ser Aveline is. Make up a bedroom for him for tonight, and the details can be hammered out on the morrow."

"Fenris!" Leandra called from the impluvium. "He's around here somewhere, I know it. Fenris, come join us! Varric's going to tell Twyla about meeting Merrill, and he can't tell it without your perspective."

"I am here," he called back, ignoring Varania's stony expression. Who was she to judge him and his place in the household? (Whatever place that might be, as yet unknown.)

He paused for a moment in the entryway, for Hawke was turned around in her seat, her face turned up to his. "I did not believe I would ever see you again," she said. "I wanted you—I wanted _all _of you to be safe and free and happy."

"I could not let your mother travel here without protection I trusted, and there was no one I trusted better than myself."

"Yet since she is here now, and safe, do you mean—?" Hawke let the question trail off, "What do you mean to do?" she finished.

"It is not enough, I have found, to be safe and free. I have lacked purpose. You intimated, upon my departure, that you planned to destroy…someone." What prompted that discretion? Some instinct? "I shall render what assistance I can to that endeavor, and in the meantime, to ensure your safety and that of your family."

Anders stirred in his seat. He had two kittens asleep in his lap now, the long-haired cream one and a second one striped in pale grey, tan and peach. "Hawke, I'll do what I can for him, but that stick up his spine might be congenital."

"The first rule of my House is, 'Play nice with others'," she chided the healer. "Please, Fenris, sit and _please_, tell me my brother isn't waiting to jump out and surprise me too. The last I heard, he had joined a mercenary company called the Red Iron."

That made a smile quirk his lips. "Carver is not here. He joined them, but he did not last long, lacking the discipline of a professional soldier."

"Oh, dear. What is he doing now?"

"First things first," Leandra said. "You made a certain person a promise when she rescued us from the Darkspawn."

"I well recall it," Hawke nodded. "You who were not there and never met her will not believe it, but Flemeth, the Witch of the Wilds, is real. She asked that I—that one of us take a pendant to Sundermont. Unlikely as it was that I should ever be in a position to fulfill that promise, I gave the pendant to Carver."

Varric nodded, snagging a round of bread and a wedge of cheese. "And when he was...between jobs, he remembered the pendant and the promise, and asked Fenris and myself to accompany him up the mountain." He launched into the tale, and gradually Fenris relaxed. Why need he be tense, on edge?

True, he had returned to the land where he was by law a slave, but Anders was as much a slave as he, and look how readily he laughed and chatted, sharing the fruit and tea. Six months and more had gone by, and Hawke had not grown into another Danarius, another Hadriana. She was still herself.

Merrill was taking her turn now. "This isn't how I usually pass on tales, but I'll try to do well—I performed the Rite, and Asha'Bellanar manifested.

"She looked about at us, and said, 'This is different. I see the brother who chafes in the shadow of the Hawke, and the loyal spinner of tales. I see the runaway slave and the Dalish outcast. Times beyond measure have I seen this scene, and Hawkes of all types and kinds—some male, some female, mages, rogues, and warriors, dark and fair, all colors of hair, but_ never _before has Hawke been _missing_. I have seen other companions—the warrior woman, the sad Abomination, your sister Bethany, the pirate queen—but always, always, the Hawke at the center of you all. But this time, Hawke is not here. Why not, I wonder?'

"To your brother, she said, 'You had two siblings, both mages. Your twin is dead; the other lives. Where is he—or she?'

"'You don't remember Twyla?' he asked.

"'I remember them all, that's the problem. Twyla, Twyla, twilight, betwixt and between day and night. Where is Twyla now, Carver? In Kirkwall?'

"'In Minrathous,' he replied. 'I'm the only Hawke here.'

"'You may well be called upon to be Hawke,' she replied, 'for what may come requires a Hawke. Yet—Minrathous—I do not know. Because you survived, I know your sister is a mage. What manner of mage is she?'

"'Twyla is hardly a mage at all,' he said. 'All she wants to do is potter around trying to find out how and why things work. Things nobody cares about, either.'

"'That too is different.' Asha'Bellanar then looked at the three of us. 'And you—where do you plan to go? What do you plan to do? Who do you plan to follow?'

"'I shall return to Minrathous,' you said, Fenris. Varric said, 'I go where the story—and in this case, the money, too—leads me. I'm bound for Minrathous.' And I said—,'I don't know. I never planned on leaving the People.'

"She has very scary eyes. Bright, bright yellow. They pierce worse than Marethari's. It's quite terrifying when she looks at you like she can see you've holes in your smallclothes. She told me, 'You will learn to define 'People' as being more than merely the Dalish before you're through. I cannot see what will happen, not without Twyla Hawke here to pass scrutiny, but I see this—that Fate will pool and spool around her wherever she is, and you will find yourself in Tevinter whether you like it or not.'"

* * *

A/N: Hawke has been going through chemo (or its equivalent) and shaved her head when her hair started to fall out. It's only hair, and it will grow back. I decided not to go into detail about the various side effects because trying to write it bored me and it would probably bore you to read about it.

Anders's kittens are called Lady Thistledown and Serah Tiger-lily (yes, he has his tabby!). Both are female, because girl kitties don't pee all over the place to mark their territory.


	18. Awareness

Passion was a cheat, Twyla Hawke knew. She had lain with a couple of men back in Fereldan, and she knew how it went. All the excitement, the liquidity in the loins, the way you trembled while waiting for that first kiss. But however sweet the kisses were, however feverish and urgent the caresses, the act itself was a terrible letdown, a few thrusts before he groaned and finished, then fell asleep, leaving her there wishing she hadn't bothered. Any romantic feelings she may harbored for her partner had tended to flee in the grey cold light of morning. What was supposed to happen did not happen, at least not for her.

Since she could accomplish more for herself on her own, quietly, efficiently, (and very effectively!), without the attendant risks—she had decided to forgo passion. As a girl, she had never blushed, giggled, gossiped and run after boys, never made them the center of her world. As a woman, she did not look on marriage as the beginning of her life, and although aware that many women found great happiness with other women, she had not yet met the right woman. (Isabella had given it her best, to no avail.) She was not waiting for anything, nor for anyone. There was the whole world out there, more fascinating than any one person could ever be, and there was her work.

And then…

And then she and her mother had fled Danarius's loathsome orgy, and at the darkest moment of her life there had been a voice, dark and smooth and sardonic, and it served as a rope to pull herself of a pit of despair. The voice came out of an elf with snow-colored hair and…she was lost. One moment, she was one person, heart-whole, needing no one, and the next, half her life, half her _self_ was slouching against the wall.

It was ridiculous. Could she do _nothing_ the way other people did? It seemed not.

Whether this was love, she could not say, but whatever it was, it was intolerable that this man should be at the mercy of Danarius.

She offered to buy him, and Danarius set an impossible price on his head.

So there was nothing for it but to do the impossible, to work out the trick which made 'motes' unhook themselves from their 'atomies' and then make them reconfigure into the structure which made lyrium what it was. There were tales of mills that would grind out whatever you told them to: salt, flour, or gold, and perhaps the tales were metaphors. 'The Mill' was what she named the process.

"How did you do it?" Fenris asked her one night several days after she had rescued him. "You _say _you are not that powerful a mage."

"If you were to pile up books on the edge of a table one at a time, making a great heavy stack that you couldn't lift however you tried, and then I came along and toppled them all over using just my pinky, would you say I was stronger than you?"

"No," his brow furrowed. "You are saying that you take advantage of what is already in place, so your part requires but little effort."

She nodded. "It's a matter of knowing where to push."

By that time, she knew that she loved him, and she knew too that if she tried to let him know, it would be a mistake and a disaster. He was damaged, he was angry, he was distrustful, and with cause. Since she truly did care for him, she would do the right thing. She would, with love, and out of love, set him free.

And she did, no matter that it hurt her like the amputation of a limb. She could bear it; it was not worse than Bethany's death, nowhere as near as bad. She could think of him out there in the world and be glad.

Yet now he had returned.

"Then she turned into a dragon and flew away," Merrill concluded.

"Wait a moment, what did she mean by Hawke having been there so many times and all so different?" Anders asked. "Hawke is right here and perfect as she is, a woman and a mage. Not a man, not a warrior, not a rogue, and _not_ in Kirkwall." Anders was a charming flirt, but such a friendly and kind one that it was not awkward. His tact and humor had sustained her through the loss of her hair, through the days she retched up everything and the nights her bowels turned to water.

"When I was young, I had to read works by ancient philosophers from before Andraste's time," her mother commented, "ones who wrote when belief in the Old Gods had waned, but before worship of the Maker was universal. They had some very strange ideas."

"Ah," Twyla smiled. "Like the fancy that everything in the material world is made up of tiny atomies with motes that spin around them." _That, at any rate, is true_.

"Yes, that was one of the more unbelievable ones…If I recall, there was a philospher who proposed the idea that the Maker made an infinite number of worlds, so that everything that _could_ happen would have somewhere to happen. Another one thought we lived a great loop in which everything happened over and over again, and a lot of other such idle thoughts. Maybe the old philosophers were right. Perhaps there is more to reality than we know, and Flemeth knows it."

"I would not put anything past a woman who can change into a dragon," Twyla Hawke commented. "It does make me wonder who the sad Abomination is, though, as I can identify Aveline as the 'warrior woman' and Isabella just has to be the pirate queen. But go on, Merrill."

"There's not much else to tell, really, " the elven mage said, "I went to Kirkwall along with Varric, Carver, and Fenris. I can't say I cared for it very much. The alienage was especially dismal, and it always smelled of cabbage. I don't like cabbage, no matter how much you boil it. But Carver did come visit me, and that was how he met Feynriel's mother."

"Oh!" The young mage jumped. "My mother is Elven, as you can tell just by looking at me." He mumbled the last part.

"His mother and I are of the same Clan, the Sabrae," Merril nodded.

Hawke leaned forward, scrutinizing his features. He blushed under her gaze. His voice had not yet broken, his skin still had the translucence of childhood—a very pretty young lad, all told.

"I would not say I could tell," she said, "You are fine featured, it's true, but no more so, I think, than Anders here must have been at your age. From the down on your upper lip, you'll have to start shaving ere long, which is not an Elven trait. I am sure you feel very conspicuous, but a large part of that is simply because you're so young. Give yourself a few years to come into your full growth, and not only will you look different, you'll feel less self-conscious. So your father was human?"

"Yes, an Antivan merchant. He abandoned us when Mother found out she was going to have me, and she couldn't go back to her clan with a half-breed baby. So she brought me up on her own—but then I turned out to be a mage. For years she hid me, made me hide my powers—but lately, I've been having dreams where demons never leave me alone. Then she started saying I ought to go to the Circle."

The last was said with great bitterness, and Anders made a sympathetic noise.

"Hmm," Hawke thrummed deep in her throat. "Have these been violent dreams, where you wake to find things flying around the room, on fire, or covered in ice?"

"Rarely…mostly it's voices, though. Demons, offering me…things."

"I will do what I can to help you, but I've little personal experience. Demons have never bothered much with me," she said. "However, from what I've learned by talking to others, it's that a mage with little or nothing to do, as in the Circle, as you were while you were hiding, and mages who are under intolerable pressure, in fear for their lives, the minds, and their freedom, who are the most actively plagued by demons. Idle minds are worse than idle hands. We'll discuss it later. Please go on."

"Well, I went to my father, who told me about an ex-Templar named Samson who helped runaway mages escape the city, so one night I snuck out and found him. He sent me to a Captain Reiner, who was a slaver." Feynriel looked down at the tiled floor. "It turned out he sells people like me into slavery so he can buy lyrium. I should have known no one would help a stranger for nothing."

"Hey, now!" Varric protested. "What do you call what _we_ did? Hiking all the way out onto the Wounded Coast, bearding slavers in their den—."

"I'm sorry, you're right," the youth apologized. "Only up until now, I wasn't sure you weren't—Bringing someone all the way to Minrathous just to _save_ them from slavery seemed like another trick. Although, if your household, Lady Hawke, is a fair example, then it doesn't seem that bad—."

"It is that bad," Fenris and Anders said in unison, then glared at each other. Anders won the staring match and went on, "I wound up in Minrathous by my own folly, which was ten times greater than yours and cost me dearly." He extended a finger to scratch his tabby kitten under her chin. She turned over on her back and stretched all four paws out, treading the air and making him smile. "I was auctioned off and had three owners, each successively worse, before Hawke rescued me. People here in this house are slaves in name only. No other magister in the Imperium makes sure slaves have pocket money of their own when they go to market, or gives them a day of rest every week."

"He is right, although it does not explain why hiring servants is such trouble," Fenris pointed out.

"Aron must have told you," Twyla winced. "Mother knows all about my well-intentioned failures, don't you, Mother?" The elder lady nodded. "The freeborn, however poor, either won't work at what they perceive to be slave labor or they don't want to work beside slaves on equal terms. Those who are willing tend to be either unable to hold down any other job or to be thieves, either professional or opportunistic. It's quite dispiriting."

"But if it's so bad for slaves everywhere else, wouldn't buying them, like you did Anders, be a _good _thing?" Merrill asked. "Perhaps you couldn't buy everybody, but just because you can't make things better for everyone doesn't mean you can't make them better for _somebody_."

"That way lies complacency," Hawke sighed. "Other than Anders, I have bought no one since I first bought Fenris, Aron and Orana. I would keep it that way if I could. I hope to free everyone, some day."

"Just your own people, or all the slaves in Tevinter? Please don't tell me that's why you hired me," Varric quipped. "Because that's an awfully tall order…no pun intended."

"Of all my well-intentioned disasters, that would likely be my biggest and most lamentable," she replied. "There are problems enough in this district to occupy us for years and years. To begin with, there is nowhere to buy nourishing cooked food—the places that exist are filthy wineshops—and cooking at home is forbidden to apartment dwellers without proper kitchens. Anders tells me that burns are the commonest injury he sees at his clinic. What do you think of starting a, a _string_ of consistent, reliable cookshops that sell inexpensive, filling hot food? Meals that won't have people staring at their privy doors all night. They could sell neither wine nor bread, for wine sellers are strictly regulated—not concerning their food, just their wines, and bread must meet very specific standards of weight and content."

"Basically that just means they're run by gangs and exist on an elaborate system of bribes," Anders added.

"You'd take all the fun out of seediness that way," Varric replied. "But there's something to that…What do you imagine they'd serve?"

"Soup with lots of noodles, to make up for no bread." With that and other conversation, they filled the time until dinner, and at no time did she betray that she was as aware of Fenris as if she were inside his skin.

_Did he truly return for the reasons he said he did? Or…? Surely not._

* * *

A/N: In this AU of Thedas, atoms are going to be called 'atomies', protons/neutrons/electrons are either fixed or moving 'motes', cells are 'boxes', and blood (as you already know) is made up of worker particles, soldier particles, and spinner particles.

In other news: It's been a really really messed up week… May I have amnesty from answering all currently not-replied-reviews? I will start over with this chapter. Also I must catch up on all your chapters—you know who you are. Also, thank you to those who have added me to your lists.


	19. Moments: Hadriana and Merrill

Some time the next day:

"…And so, given that I'm not pleased by the amenities, the service, or any _other_ aspect of the Palatine, and it has been less than a week, I desire a refund in full, as the member agreement promises." Hadriana concluded.

"We don't have to refund a copper of your fees," said the woman who ran the baths, "and we are not going to. You're right, the member agreement does promise a full refund in the first week if you're not satisfied, but you obviously didn't read it carefully before you signed." She brought out a blank form and laid it down before Hadriana's eyes, her manicured finger stabbing at a clause.

'The Palatine Gynnasia is here to provide a relaxing, soothing haven for all its patronesses who seek a respite from the cares of the world. All forms of contentious, provocative, or offensive behavior, including insulting language and threats, whether they be verbal, physical, or magical, are prohibited on the premises. Violation of this rule will lead to immediate expulsion and forfeiture of all fees.'

"But—I was unwell, I didn't know what I was saying. Magister Hawke herself took no offense. I never meant her any harm—."

The manager twirled a stylus in her fingers. "_Please_. The entire city knows your former master sent you to challenge her and threw you out before you even slunk home, and before you even think to raise your staff against me, need I remind you there are dozens of adepts and master mages under this roof right now? There wouldn't be enough of you left to fill a dustpan if you did." She threw down the stylus and pointed to the door.

* * *

"This isn't glass or quartz," Hawke said, her brow creasing in thought as she peered at the eluvian. "The multiatomie structure is wrong for either. Some form of mica or feldspar, split off in one piece from a single huge crystal. Or…two pieces, with some substance in between? No, just one piece." She had a piece of paper pinned to a board, and was sketching what Merrill thought was a very pretty pattern of rings and triangles linked with little lines.

Hawke had explained about how everything was made up of atomies, and that some atomies were friendly and apt to form bonds with other atomies, making multiatomies, such as water or the crystal of the eluvian, while other atomies were closed and didn't join up. It seemed to Merrill that Hawke was an extra-friendly atomie who had joined all of them together somehow—even her, for all that she had thought she was as closed as an atomie could get.

"So you said your friends found it in an ancient underground chamber," Hawke glanced at her.

"Yes," Merrill explained about Tamlen's disappearance and Mahariel's slow, agonizing death. "Eons ago, before Arlathan fell, the Elvhen used them to communicate over long distances, and even to travel . Most of them were seized by Imperium Magisters—not ones like you, I mean—and they could only use them for communicating. After a while, even those eluviaene stopped working. I don't know how they work, not yet. These are all the pieces I could gather together, afterward. I managed to cleanse it of the Taint, but not much more than that."

"Hmmm," Hawke intoned. "My theory is—."

"You have a theory?" Merrill jumped up and looked under the table. "People sometimes talk about somebody having a pet theory, but I've never seen one, and I'm ever so curious. Are they an animal or a bird? Or is it just a popular name humans give their pets?"

Hawke gurgled a little laugh. "Ah, no, but I understand why you thought so. 'Theory' is a fancy word that people use when they make what they think is a very good guess based on what they already know. Your eluvian was struck off a very large chunk of this material all in one piece, which took a great deal of skill and magic both. I don't know whether the material was made or mined, but my theory is that when this sheet was cleaved off, it was done so in a way that separated it physically but left it magically intact, and that all the other eluviaene—did I say that right?—that all the others came from the same block. Since they were still magically in one piece, what was seen or said in the presence of one could be seen or heard near all. I imagine there were controlling spells that allowed one to, to fine-tune which exact one you wanted to communicate with. As to how it could be used like a door—that I don't know, but give me some time and I'll make a run at it."

"That sounds….remarkable sensible, actually. Do you have a theory about why it isn't working now? I did everything I could to cleanse it and stick it back together."

"I do, and if I'm right, then I am sorry I must tell you I don't think it can be made to work again. I think that altering an eluvian so it's no longer identical to the others magically or physically breaks the magic which kept it magically intact. This one was broken, Tainted, cleansed, and partially repaired. Even if it could be made to _look_ exactly as it did before it was damaged, with all the multiatomies lined up right again, it wouldn't _be_ the same. It's like putting sugar in tea—you can stir it in, but you can't unstir it back out. A better repair would only serve to change it more. The eluviaene stolen by the magisters were probably damaged over time and stopped working for the same reason."

"Oh." Merrill's ears drooped a little. "I know—I can tell that you're being very kind and tactful, but I can't tell if you're lying about this or not. I mean, yes, it brought awful things through and killed two of my friends, yes, I used blood magic and got a demon to help, yes, that got me cast out by my own people, but if you think it's actually too dangerous and wrong and you don't believe in me, I'd rather you just said so, and didn't make up a story. Really. Also, I'm glad you don't look at me like you're smelling something bad like Fenris does, and now Anders too-on account of the blood magic, I mean, if I _do_ smell bad, that's another story. Your baths here are very beautiful, but I can't get _used_ to the water being hot, and cold works just as well... I—I'm sorry, I'll stop talking now."

Hawke smiled, a little sad and quite sympathetic, Merrill thought. "It wasn't so long ago that when I tried talking about my ideas and theories, instead of listening, my family replied by saying 'Why do you think I, or anybody else, would care?' or 'That's nice, dear. Now go hang up the washing.' Or worst of all, 'That'll never work!' I don't know if I'm right about any of this. Indeed, I could be completely wrong. But since at least one of the eluviaene is somewhere that dangerous things are just waiting to come through, then trying to connect this one back up would be dangerous. However, if we studied this one and then tried to make a new set of our own—."

"Truly?! You _want_ to work on it with me? And you're not going to lecture me about blood magic or anything?"

"I _do_ want to talk to you about blood magic, because I have a theory-." Hawke stopped. "Are you-are you starting to cry, Merrill?"

"I-I wish theories _were_ pets and you had lots of them so I could take care of them all. I promise I will always listen to your ideas and care even if I don't understand all of what you're saying. I've never felt so-I'm not inconvenient, am I? When your brother was making plans to send us here, he said, 'Let _her_ be inconvenienced for once.' And I don't want to be inconvenient." Merrill yanked at her neckerchief so she could dab her welling eyes.

"You are not inconvenient, and I do have lots of theories. Come on-let me show you my workroom. You see, blood is actually very complicated. It's mostly water, but it's full of living particles..."

It was the happiest day Merrill could remember, and only when she was in her bed that night did she find this thought rising to her mind. _'Fen'Harel must have seemed friendly and helpful at the start too. Once Hawke understands the eluvian, then the shemlen will own yet another piece of the elvhen. Is it worth it?'_

She could not tell if it was her own thought, or the demon Audacity speaking to her in her own voice.

Maybe they were of the same opinion.

* * *

A/N: A multiatomie is a molecule.


	20. What Makes Hawke Mad?

"Let me get this straight, Hawke," Varric said, very slowly. "The…_Municipal Water Board_ wants you dead? I'm sorry, but as far as mortal enemies go, that lacks a certain style."

"I know," she turned from her place at the railing of her turret bower, "Nevertheless, it's true. They are behind the greater part of these assassination attempts. It was because I had the aqueduct repaired. This district was filthy and disease-ridden, and knowing that tainted groundwater is the cause of many illnesses, it seemed repairing the aqueduct would be a relatively simple and swift way to improve living conditions for many people at one stroke. I thought no one would care if a private citizen spent her own money on such a project."

"Don't tell me, let me guess." The dwarf pinched the bridge of his nose. "Somebody was embezzling the official repair and maintenance funds."

The group in the turret consisted of Anders, Fenris, Leandra, Varric, and of course, Hawke herself. The others-Merrill, Dagna, Aveline, and Feynriel, had been left out not so much by design as by who had felt like climbing all those stairs immediatly after dinner. Aveline was reading a book about sword making and wondering if it would make a good hobby, Dagna was working on an instrument that would measure exactly how hot or cold it was, Feynriel, in the middle of a growth spurt and always hungry, was raiding the larder and thinking about a binomial theorem,(learning that he was good with numbers, Hawke had introduced him to algebra in the hopes of distracting his mind from demons.) Merrill was weeding the garden and thinking about what Hawke's discoveries about blood meant. She was also apologizing to every weed she pulled.

"Exactly so," Twyla agreed. "There are two water systems, one private, serving those who can afford to have water piped directly to them, and the other public, which is supposed to supply the fountains where everyone else draws their water. The first is meant to pay for the second, but for decades, the fountains have been dry. Then I came along, knowing nothing of the nuances, and now the Board faces seizure of their personal assets and possibly even criminal prosecution. Not because the magisters disapprove, but to save face. Politics here are _complicated_. Officials are elected (always from the Magisterial ranks) based on how popular they are with the people, so they provide bread to feed them and games and circuses at the Ampitheater to keep them entertained. The Water Board is considered a good entry into a life of politics and public service, because water mostly flows downhill of its own accord and therefore it's an easy post—or it was. So now they're trying to have me killed."

"It was the _right_ thing to do," Anders insisted. "When the fever season came, this district had the lowest death rates of any in Minrathous save for the Sacred Enclosure, thanks to the aqueduct water. The people can't even cook in their own homes, so getting them to boil their water before drinking it when the heat is at its worst isn't really possible. It was a compassionate deed, and it continues to make their lives better."

"You'll get no argument from me about it being the right thing to do. It's the way Hawke went about it that was wrong. The thing to do would have been to find out who was supposed to be doing the work and bribing or blackmailing them. Still, the situation can still be salvaged."

"I would hope so!" Leandra Hawke said. "You bear out my faith in you, Varric. Barely two days here, and you already have the lay of the land. Politics here are quite ridiculous. It's like a Landsmeet to which the whole country's invited!"

"But only the Magisters ever win," Fenris growled.

"What if _Hawke_ were to win?" Varric speculated. "If she were _on_ the Water Board, then she wouldn't be a blundering outsider-sorry, Hawke, but I have to call it like I see it- then she's just a reformer, someone officially working for the greater good. If in the meantime, you make it up to them by throwing a few goodies their way, make a few speeches exonerating those currently in trouble-It's not their fault, they only inherited the system, stuff like that. Show that you're willing to play the game, and nobody will object to you spending as much of your money as you want on aqueducts."

"I don't know if I like the sound of this," Hawke said, doubt coloring her voice. "The last thing I want is to associate even more with these people."

"Well, it's early days yet," the dwarf said. "It's things like that which you hired me for, though. Speaking of which-exactly what business dealings need to be untraceable?"

Hawke made a few passes in the air, and the ambient sound of the city, even of the tower, disappeared. "A charm of Silence," she explained. "In strictest confidence, there's a spy in the household who reports to Danarius."

"Who?" Fenris came to alert.

"Varania. Aveline and Aron both know it, Aveline because I told her, Aron because he spotted what I did. Danarius is very fond of a certain incense, a very expensive one. Whenever she sneaks off to report to him, she comes back smelling of it. I haven't fired her because this way I know who it is, and if I got rid of her, the next one might be bright enough to change her clothes and wash her hair before she comes home."

"Where there is one, there may be others who report to some other of your enemies," Fenris pointed out, giving Anders a strong glare.

"Cast your suspicions elsewhere," Anders replied. "There's _nothing_ any other magister could offer me that would convince me to inform on Hawke."

"Ahem!" Varric put in. "The business dealings?"

"It requires some explaining," Twyla stepped up onto the hanging platform, making the bells on the chain chime, and took a cross-legged position. "Cousin Daylen and I have been writing to each other regularly, and he's been sending me samples of soil from Blighted areas to study, among other things."

"Hold a moment. _Daylen_? You mean Daylen _Amell_, the Grey Warden Commander?" Anders asked, astonishment making his eyebrows climb his forehead. At the nods of the two Hawke women, he said, "I know him! Well, maybe 'knew' him is more accurate. He's under the impression that I'm dead. So he's your cousin, imagine that. Small world."

"Why does he think you're dead?" Fenris growled.

"Ummm…." Anders rubbed his neck. "I had been hanging around Vigil's Keep to avoid Templars, who were warned off your cousin by the king, and when he went off to defend Amaranthine, the Keep was attacked by Darkspawn. The Keep fell, but a few people lived through it, including me, obviously. There was no way of knowing if your cousin was alive or dead, so I dressed one of the dead in my robes and ran for it."

"So you're a coward," stated the elf.

"You have neither right nor reason to say that!" Anders flared up. "I was there through the entire battle. I had friends there, and I fought beside them. I healed their wounds, and when I could no longer keep their souls in their bodies, I was there when they died. Can _you_ say as much?"

"…I cannot," Fenris conceded.

"Ahem!" Varric coughed again. "Hawke?"

"Thank you. Perhaps in time, I may learn how to restore life to Blighted soil, but at this moment, Daylen tells me that Fereldan faces a famine such as it has never known, with two-thirds of its arable land wasted and barren. The people are reduced to eating the grain saved for seed stock, and in the spring, there will be nothing to plant on the land that is left. I want to do something to help feed my homeland."

"Unless you can transmute grains of sand into grains of wheat, that might be a bit difficult," Varric pointed out. "…Can you?"

"No," Hawke said. "I can change the multiatomical structure of a thing. I cannot change its nature. I can (and have) put all the different substances that go into food into a bowl, and do what I will, I can't make it digestible. Food must be grown. Nor can I grow enough by accelerating the crop over and over again—the soil is depleted just as much as growing it in the usual way. A few rounds, and the ground would be as dead as if it were Blighted."

She paused a moment, frowning in thought, then went on. "Fields need to be manured and planted with lentils and allowed to lie fallow some years, there is no escaping that. No, the food must be procured some other way, which is to say, it must be bought from Nevarre. They produce more food for export than any other country."

"Including for the Imperium," Fenris commented. "Half the food sold here comes from Nevarre. What is it you intend, Hawke?"

"The Imperium is capable of feeding itself," she replied. "The problem here is that magisters have amassed huge estates in the country, and then proceeded to turn them into pleasure gardens, pretty but useless. The view of fields ripening with grain is boring, so they must be destroyed in favor of an ornamental lake. Picturesque ruins are all the rage, so the olive grove that has produced hundreds of bushels of fruit and barrels of oil for five hundred years and more must be torn out and a fake crumbling tower put in its place. Vineyards must go to make way for…you get the idea, I'm sure. It's an affront to the earth which feeds us and all those who labored to make it yield."

The last was said with passionate conviction and not a little anger. Hawke paused, looked around at their surprised reactions, and smiled wryly. "I've anger enough to make a dozen rage demons cower in a corner, when I am moved to it—not literally, though. I was given an estate in the country which was half ornamental water garden, and a broken one at that, all soggy ground and mosquitos. I've found a variety of rice that will thrive on it, so next season that's what will be planted. The people who work the land will do so as sharecroppers, not as slaves—they'll keep part of what they grow. It's a start."

"_That_ I like," Fenris said, a brief smile of approval crossing his face before he sobered up again. "So you would have Varric arrange for the secret purchase of food in Nevarre, and ship it to Fereldan, forcing the magisters to give up their rose gardens to grow grain. What of the slaves who will do the actual work? _They_ will get no share of those crops."

"But they will be more valuable for their labor than they would be for the power gained by sacrificing them—I hope. I know I can be wrong about things, and I certainly make mistakes. But Fereldan needs help_ now_." Hawke concluded.


	21. Moving

His rooms—_rooms_, plural, _two_ of them all his own, one a bedroom, the other a room to sit in and read and store his weapons—were at the foot of the only stairs up to Hawke's chambers. No one could get to her without his knowing it—not unless they flew in and descended from her turret bower above. So while she slept, she was safe from anyone other than Flemeth, he hoped. The only other people on the same floor as he were Aveline, as her other bodyguard should be, and Orana, in order to be on hand as her personal attendant. The elf girl confided to him that she had slept on the floor under the braided rag rug in her room for weeks until she worked up the courage to sleep in her own bed.

So Fenris was _not _lying in wait for Hawke that morning, he was simply being vigilant. And he did want to talk to her. "I would speak with you," he greeted her as she came down the stairs. Orana had already brought her breakfast and water for washing, so she was dressed and ready for the day.

"Aah!" she squawked, then laughed in relief. "Don't—don't do that. Not first thing in the morning."

"My apologies," he offered. "But I would still speak with you."

"What about? I'm on my way to my workrooms."

They went down the next flight together and—that dress. She wore the same dress she had on the day she rescued him, linen the color of fresh bay leaves. He would never forget a single detail of that day, but what he had not paid attention to then was how sensual it was. Most women, certainly all female mages, wore clothes that fit very tightly from neck to hip over corsetry so solid it was practically armor. Even when the dress was low-cut, nothing about them _moved_, nothing was soft or relaxed.

This dress was the antithesis of all those garments. It was loose, fluid, unanchored, no more complicated than a night gown. It flowed over her breasts and skimmed over her belly, buttocks, thighs. _Yielding_ was a word that came to mind, and _easy to take off_ followed upon its heels. Whatever she wore under it was…not enough to keep all of that fascinating anatomy from _moving_.

Luckily the groin protection his armor provided would keep his reaction from showing, although chafing might become a problem. He looked down at his feet, regained the thread of his thoughts.

"The witch. Your mother and Varric think her adorable. I cannot agree. She is dangerous."

"Merrill?" Hawke raised an eyebrow. "I think she's both. She's like a kitten—there's an innocence that sees innocence in everything, and that is how she sees the world—for the most part. There is no malice in her. However, that kind of naiveté is dangerous, to her and to others. I think she needs supervision."

"You need not be the one to provide it. She is not your responsibility, and I see no good of her being here." Fenris stated flatly.

"Carver passed the responsibility on to me. Without the protection of my House, out on her own in Minrathous, she would likely be raped and murdered within a day, or else enslaved. That would prey upon me, if it happened. As far as what good may come of her being here, she has already furthered my understanding of the nature of blood. You're making a face—," Hawke broke off. "As I said the other night, I am studying blood itself. Not blood magic, which really ought to be called _pain_ magic."

"Anything to do with blood is suspect," he scowled.

"Fenris, I don't know how to tell you this, and I am very sorry, but…there is _blood_ running through your veins _right now."_

"You mock me."

"No, I only tease you," she countered. "You haven't seen my workspace yet. Come with me, and I'll show you what I've been up to. " They had reached the ground floor , and she led him to the massive, iron bound door which looked all of a piece with its frame.

"I—." he began, a faint panic stirring in his chest. "I do not know…the last time I was in such a place—."

"You don't have to." She scanned his face, realizing his hesitance. "I only thought you might like to. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm."

"No, I shall. I want to see." He said it resolutely. "I would rather know than not know."

She passed a hand over the door, and the seams flowed apart. "A lock that opens to me alone—although a very determined person with a heavy axe and a lot of time could hack through it. The wood is several layers thick and the boards mounted cross-grained, so they will not split consistently. If ever there's an emergency while I'm down here, there's the bell pull."

They crossed the lintel, and when the door closed behind them, he noticed the back of it was shielded in lead. "Just in case," she explained. In case of what, she did not say.

They descended, and Fenris braced himself. He remembered Danarius' workrooms—the erratic torch light, the carrion smell of rotting flesh, the occult trappings and ominous dark stains on every surface, the perpetual clammy feeling of cooled sweat—. Twyla Hawke's workroom was clean, well lighted, so simple as to be austere, and had a faint breeze circulating through it.

He commented on it, and she said, slipping a cotton smock on over her dress, "That's Dagna's doing. It's equipment such as is used in dwarven mines and forges, adapted for home use. Here, this is a micro-seer. The dwarves have had them for at least a century, but_ this_ one magnifies many times more than those can…."

She showed him how to use it, first putting a slip of glass with a thin slice of iris leaf on the platform, then another with a smear of blood—_her_ blood, which she drew by jabbing her thumb with a needle. He was sensitive to magic, courtesy of the markings and…there was none in what she did. Under the lenses of the micro-seer was a whole world teeming with a life all its own. She explained, and he listened, but he could not shake the awareness of her warmth, her nearness—though she never touched him.

"There is no difference between the blood of a man and the blood of a woman, nor between one who is a mage and one who is not, nor between human, dwarf, or elf. I suspect there is no difference between that of a Qunari, either, for they are made the same as we are, even if it is to one-and-a-half scale," she finished. "The blood of different individuals does not always mix when mingled—sometimes it clumps up. I suspect there is some factor I haven't yet identified.

"But what does it mean, Hawke? What do you hope to prove in proving this?" He looked up from the micro-seer.

"That perhaps all the races we perceive as different are not so, that the differences go no further than the surface, no more than a colony of cats with short legs differs from those with extra toes, or from those with ears that curl funny. That dwarves became dwarves because when you live underground it makes sense that people who are shorter and sturdier and quite strong do better, and when you live in the woods, slender feet, exceptional hearing and a slim build make for a better stealthy hunter, and so came the elves. As for the Qunari, being eight feet tall and heavily muscled is certainly an advantage in practically every way. And the rest of us—we're just a bunch of city cats who breed indiscriminately."

"Then we are therefore equal, and should live together in peaceful brotherhood?" he asked, and he heard the cheap glaze of cynicism in his voice. "No one _wants_ to believe that, Hawke. Not the dwarves, not the Dalish, nor the humans and certainly not the Qunari. You will never convince them."

"If it's true, then it won't matter whether people believe or disbelieve," she said, "The truth stays true. I didn't go in expecting to find these results. I found them, and reasoned outward from there. If people disagree, I invite them to prove otherwise, in fact."

"How many different people's blood have you studied so far?"

"Only four. Dagna, Merrill, Anders, and myself. I'm not going to go around ordering my people to stick out their thumbs to satisfy my curiosity. I take only willing volunteers." She was near him, very near. Close enough that their heads had even bumped when she adjusted the mirror that reflected light into the micro-seer. She used a perfume that mingled embrium and neroli, he noticed. Half a turn, and their mouths would meet. His armor was chafing him sorely.

"That's—of a piece with how you have behaved ever since I have known you," he conceded. "Hawke—when we parted, before we were interrupted by Danarius, you began to say something. 'Had we—' was all you said. What did you mean to say?"

"You remembered—Of course you did. I—was going to say something like…I wish we had met some other place, some other way," her voice, usually so steady, so certain, faltered. "so that somehow it did not matter to you that I was a mage and a magister." Her eyes, being so dark, always looked as though they were tremendously dilated by wine or desire or both. They were inches apart. "But that is not possible, and so I hope the rest of your life is…is…"

He leaned over that last two inches and tentatively feathered a kiss on her lips.

* * *

A/N: Yes, I am evil. Very, very evil.


	22. Fluttering

Light and fluttering, like a live moth in a cupped hand, that kiss, and like a moth, released in a moment.

"Fenris," Hawke breathed, "I did not set you free for this. I cannot think of anything more terrible or debasing than to attach such strings to your freedom."

"I know," he replied, daring greatly, "but since you take willing volunteers—." Brief as it was, that kiss was a taste that wakened hunger.

She put a hand up between them, looked away, "Given who and what I am, all I can foresee coming of this is disaster. Look for someone who is not a mage, my friend, someone you can trust without reservation, and…"

"I know I ought not to trust you, and yet I do. I know I ought not to…care for you, and still, I do. You are the mage who looked at a slave and saw a person—a _man_, and the mage who paid more than a king's ransom for me, and the mage who set me free, and asked nothing of me. Should I feel nothing for you?"

"This is too sudden and too soon," she answered, "I fear you mistake gratitude for something more. I do not want to take advantage of you, no matter how much you think you want me to—and want me, too."

"Then it _is _mutual," he growled, triumphant.

"Attractions happen without regard to what is best for people. I've found many people attractive to some degree or other; everyone does, I think," Hawke demurred. "It's seldom, very, very seldom, that I act on my attractions; I am not a cat in heat. If all you want is sex, then I am the wrong person. If you want more, then I am even more wrong."

"Yet how many have you paid over a hundred pounds of lyrium for, and incurred the deadly enmity of a powerful magister in doing so?" he countered.

"Only one—yet I would not, I _will _not make you happy now to have you hate me later."

A sharp whistle interrupted their banter. "Ah, this is something I haven't shown you yet: the speaking tube. It's the other way of getting hold of me down here. When I'm concentrating or doing something noisy I often don't hear it; that's why the bell is there. I always hear that." She crossed the room to a nozzle-like contraption, and removed its cap.

"Hello?" she spoke into the tube, then put her ear up to it. Fenris' exceptional elven hearing made him privy to both sides of the conversation that followed.

"You have a visitor who pleads to be allowed to speak with you," Aveline said, irony coloring her voice.

"Hadriana?" Hawke guessed.

"Got it in one," Aveline confirmed. We've confiscated her staff and three knives. If she has a fourth on her anywhere, it's somewhere I _wouldn't_ want to stick my fingers."

"How does she look?"

"Like she's been sleeping in her clothes and hasn't eaten in a couple of days. I can support that last guess by telling you that right now she's in the courtyard tearing down oranges and eating them straight off your trees without so much as asking." Aveline replied.

"Any fresh blood on her?" Hawke inquired.

"Not that I can see. Just a stain that looks like she vomited down the front of herself and didn't wash it out very well, ugh."

"So she hasn't come pre-loaded with blood magic and she's weak with hunger. Very good. Let's let her stew for a while. Quietly get all the servants somewhere inside where they'll be safe and make _sure _my mother keeps to her rooms. Anders is to round up the kittens, just in case."

"You and he and those _kittens_," One could hear the headshake in Aveline's voice. "I'm on it, Hawke."

"Hadriana? What does she want here?" Fenris snarled.

"She's come to beg for a place in my household," Hawke capped the tube. "Don't worry, I'm not about to give her one. Even were she not one of the vilest creatures breathing, given two hot meals and a good night's sleep she'd be out to kill me again."

"She is also one of the most doomed creatures still breathing," Fenris predicted, heading for the stairs. "I shall kill her."

"Hold a moment!" Hawke hurried after him, placed a hand on his arm. "Hadriana is dead already, for all that her heart yet beats. Less than a week ago, she tried to challenge me; now she's reduced to begging for my help. Danarius threw her out—how long was she his apprentice? Ten years or more? She's no money, no friends, no resources and _no recourse_. Spare her today, let me fight her my way, and you seal Danarius' doom more surely and swiftly."

"How?" he asked, brows crowding on each other, a thick scribble of anger.

"I must seem harmless and inept, no more a threat than a butterfly on the wing. I'm preparing a trap, and Varania is helping set it, though she knows it not. She'll contrive a way to watch this; he will know all about what happens before nightfall." Hawke gave him an intense, level look.

"You may be underestimating Hadriana."

"I may, but I will have you on hand if I have. If I cannot, she is yours to deal with as you will."

"Small consolation to me if she slays you first," Fenris muttered.

"It will not come to that," she predicted, crossing the room to her desk, where she took up a pair of scissors and began to cut a sheet of paper into tiny pieces.

"What are you doing now?" he asked.

"Preparing my arsenal," Twyla Hawke replied. "Want to help? There's another pair of shears."

"Have you no staves, no robes for battle?" he cast a glance around the room.

"None. I don't use a staff because I've terrible aim, for one thing. For another, I never wore mage robes back in Fereldan. Templars aren't usually so stupid that they miss someone walking around in mage robes with a seven foot pole strapped to their back, no matter what Anders says of their intelligence."

* * *

A/N: Yes, short. Next chapter: the showdown with Hadriana. But first: Wow, am I feeling the love for last chapter! Twelve reviews for that one alone: a new record. If I have not yet answered your review, I'm working on the backlog. Also, I have some reviews to write. Thanks so much!


	23. Static

The pile of snippets and bits had grown into a small mound before Twyla declared they were done.

"Is there something special about this paper?" Fenris inquired, watching her sweep the cuttings into a pocket of her smock.

"Yes, it's the kind dwarves use to record their archives. It doesn't burn, electricity does interesting things to it, and water doesn't harm it. It's the first two qualities that are important now." Leaving the workroom, they ascended the stairs and went out into the courtyard, where an interesting tableau awaited them.

Hadriana was at the center of it, sitting on the edge of the tiled fountain, orange peels scattered around her feet. She had been rinsing her hands in the water. Ranged around the outer perimeter of the garden were Hawke's friends and assistants—Varric carefully lubricating Bianca's ratcheting mechanism with a feather dipped in oil, Aveline openly watching the intruder, Anders on a bench, pretending to read, Dagna hiding behind a hedge of trimmed rosemary plants, wearing a leather doublet and clutching a fancy new mace, and Merrill out in the open on the other side of that same hedge, her staff at hand as well as a pair of honed gardening shears. Feynriel was watching from the upper tier balcony, looking as if he would rather be elsewhere. Mindful of Hawke's prediction, Fenris scanned the yard for Varania, and a flicker of red behind a planter on the lower tier balcony gave away her position.

"Hawke," Hadriana wiped her hands dry on her creased and soiled robes and smiled, showing too many teeth. "Forgive me for making free with your oranges, but they were so tempting, this garden so charming and lovely—I could not resist. You have an unerring sense of taste." She was ignoring Fenris completely, as magisters usually did slaves.

"That is not what you said the other day," Hawke replied. She had assumed a wary, hurt expression.

"That—oh, don't tell me _you've_ been listening to the gossip about me, too! You were right, of course—completely and entirely right. I made myself ill, and I said things—it was all my insecurity, even, even my envy. There! I admit it." She gave a little laugh. "Only you saw my…behavior for what it was, and tales fly so swiftly in this city. I—oh, Hawke, I am in terrible trouble, and if you are not kind to me, I do not know who will be. Word got to Master Danarius that I had challenged you, and he was so offended that I would attack his dear friend that he—that he threw me out. I'm not like you, Hawke, I'm not…good with people. I'm not well liked. You're the only true friend I have, really."

"You mean I am a credulous fool," Hawke replied, sounding heart-riven. "I've been told by those who know you better that you meant it, that you would have killed me—that you've done as much before, and who you did it to. I didn't want to believe it!"

"Lies—who told you? That dog at your heels?" Hadriana's mask of innocence and desperation slipped for a moment as her face twisted into its familiar, hated lines. "You can't take the word of a slave, Hawke! They're all lazy, all liars and thieves-you can't trust them."

Hawke went on, "What harm did I ever do you? How did I unknowingly offend you?" She turned her face to the side, wiped her face on her forearm—Fenris saw that her eyes were dry, that it was all an act. "Everything you did was by the Code Duello, I read it. Those weren't the words of someone who was just upset. Whatever it was, I would have made it right, if I'd known."

"You didn't" Hadriana cried out, seeing that show of emotion as a weakness to exploit. "You never did—it was Danarius, he made me. You don't know what it was like, being his apprentice. Please, Hawke. I will take the lowest place in your household, and gladly. Let me relearn goodness here. I swear you will never regret it."

Hawke was silent a long moment, as if considering. Then she turned to look at Fenris. "You know her best, Fenris. Would she make a good addition to this House?" With the eye Hadriana could not see, she winked.

As much as he hated Hadriana, as much as he wanted to kill her, there was something to relish in this moment, Fenris admitted to himself, as he said, "No, my lady, she would not. Given two hot meals and a good night's sleep,"(he quoted Hawke back to herself) "she would be out to kill you again."

"You little knife-eared piece of _filth_, how _dare_ you speak that way?" Hadriana wound an arm back, readying a spell to attack him—a mage without a staff was at a distinct disadvantage—as Hawke reached into her pocket and tossed a handful of her snippets into the air.

Rather than falling, they coalesced into a swarm, like small wasps might, and threw themselves at Hadriana's face. She gasped, batting them away, to no avail. Too amorphous to hit, too small to block, they darted into her eyes, shoved themselves into her ears, insinuating themselves in her clothes. Staggering around in spirals, she summoned fire and cast it at the sleeting, stinging cloud. It did not burn. She shoved it away with telekinesis, and it darted around the blow to assail her again. The individual pieces sliced her skin as only paper could, cuts almost too fine to bleed, yet not enough blood to stop and summon a demon with, not when she couldn't see, couldn't think, couldn't keep her balance—with a heavy thud, she tripped over a stone, losing her breath. She inhaled, and inhaled bits of paper. More paper joined the first handful, and more…

Gagging on the wads that choked her throat and made her gorge rise, she cast a Sphere of Protection, and only succeeded in trapping the bits in with her. Dropping the shield, she somehow got to her feet, her only thought to get _out_ of there, to get away, she heard Hawke say, "Fenris, if you would get the gate?" Stumbling, she ran, no, was herded by the driving rain of paper, in the direction of the sound of bolts, and was out in the street.

The paper chased her halfway to the next district before it petered out.

"What did you do, Hawke?" Fenris looked after the afflicted Hadriana. "What magic was that?"

"Telekinesis and a bit of the energy that makes bits of paper stick to a piece of amber that's been rubbed with wool. It's a little like electricity, only…more static." she explained. "I made her attractive to the paper, and let it go. The charge doesn't last long."

"That's probably the only time anything has found _her _attractive," Aveline commented. "Nicely done, Hawke."

"I couldn't agree more," Fenris said. "This is a case of pushing with your little finger and toppling everything, I take it."

"…Did you mean something dirty by that?" Merrill asked Aveline. "I've never been able to tell when people are speaking in innuendo. I used to think it must be another language."

Varric whistled. "I've seen people bluff with some terrible hands in my time, Hawke, but never with no cards at all. Life around here is going to be very interesting. I can see that already."

Up above them, Varania took it all in, including how her brother had called the Magistra simply, 'Hawke', without reprimand, and the look he gave her, which was not the look a slave gave a master, nor the look a lover gives another. Not yet.

* * *

A/N:Again, short. But fast! The Dwarven racial histories are inscribed in books with lyrium somehow. The paper has to be special in some way, I figured.


	24. Varania

"—and then the Magistra explained that if Hadriana had only stayed calm and still, the paper bits would have settled on her and stuck, so she could have brushed them away from her eyes and nose. It was the running and thrashing that made them swarm." Varania told Danarius.

"Incredible," the magister shook his head. "So my former apprentice fled in terror, attacked viciously by a handful of confetti and defeated. What a waste of my time and teaching she was. And so rather than being something wonderful, it turns out all Hawke has is a sort of shallow cleverness, quick but insubstantial, and through you I shall learn all her little secrets and ways. Said she anything of me?"

"She still speaks of you as a fatherly friend, and will believe no word against you," Varania reported.

There were moments when she suspected Hawke was nothing like as ingenuous as she seemed—that she was in fact canny enough to be moves ahead of Danarius—and then she went and got in trouble by outraging every living current _and_ former member of the Water Board, which was very nearly as stupid a move as that made by the last Archon who outlawed slavery.

"Good. And what of Fenris? Does he still not know you? Might he be shamming? He is your brother—who would know him better than you?"

"It is not feigned. He could never hide what he felt, joy or rage." She resisted the urge to rub her stinging eyes. In his private study, Danarius liked to burn a heavily scented incense combining ambergris and musk, the most expensive ingredients available, in concentrations which choked persons not accustomed to it.

"That is no surprise," Danarius commented, "for he was reduced to infancy for days after the procedure—wailing mindlessly and soiling himself. What of _her_—has he resumed his place as her…_bodyguard?"_The last word was spat with insinuating venom.

"As her guard, yes, but I do not believe that they are now, or ever were, lovers."

"And on what extraordinary knowledge of human—or elven, heh,-nature do you base this belief?" The Magister arched an eyebrow.

"Just what anybody knows about people," Varania said, "They would act differently toward each other, without saying as much as a word. That's something you can't help. And he—he would not look at her as he does if she had…granted him her favors."

Danarius grunted. "_Granted_ him her _favors_? He's a slave, not a suitor, and too used to playing the—." He did not finish the statement, but went on to say, "I'll wager that if they ever got as far as a bed, neither would know what to do. They'd just flop around on it like a couple of landed flounders."

Varania did not answer, as it was not a question, but she did not think the woman who she nominally served was as ignorant as Danarius believed. "His quarters are a floor below her suite, on the same level where her other bodyguard, the woman Aveline, sleeps, and where her personal attendant has a room," was all she said.

"So she keeps him handy anyway...What of these other people who came along with her mother? There was a dwarf, a Dalish elf, and a youth, as I recall." Varania was not his only source of information on the Hawke household, merely the closest.

"Yes. The dwarf is Varric Tethras; he's their financial advisor. The Dalish is called Merrill; she is a mage, as is the boy, Feynriel. I think he is an apprentice, but I can't say whose. The Dalish teaches him Dalish magic, the healer, healing, and Magistra Hawke is teaching him something called 'mathemagics.'"

"_Mathemagics_?" Danarius stared at her. "Are you sure she didn't say 'mathematics' instead?"

"Is there a difference?" Her brow wrinkled. Varania knew what things ought to cost when she went to the marketplace, and basically anything beyond simple money math was a world beyond her ken. "She has set him the task of proving whether the world is flat or round and how big it is. He complains that his head swims with numbers day and night but he sounds happy about it at the same time."

"'Mathemagics'", Danarius repeated, then, peevishly, "Why call her 'Magistra'? There are other female magisters who are called nothing more than 'Magister'-what did she do to be accorded such a title?"

"I'm sure I don't know, sir," she replied. She knew better than to say any more than that. Hawke was such a distinct and definite personality, as well as comparatively young, striking in appearance, and the head of her House, that she stood out among all other magisters. Whoever might have first applied it to her, the title had stuck.

"And you still cannot gain access to her workrooms?"

"No, sir. The door is only unlocked when she passes through it or admits someone; I am not among those worthy of entering. There is no key. It is sealed and unsealed by some magic unique to her."

Danarius made a sound of disgust. "And you've _still_ no idea what she's working on. Not that it's like to be anything of substance. Quick but shallow, that's what she is, quick but shallow."

The thought occurred to Varania that he was describing himself more than he was Hawke, but she suppressed it. Danarius was a _real_ magister, not a whim the Archon raised up. _He_ had _real_ magic,_ real_ power, not a smattering of sleight-of-hand tricks, and she, Varania, would be _his_ apprentice.

After a few more rounds of questions, he dismissed her, and she was left to return to Hawke's Tower. As the crow flew, Danarius lived less than three miles away from the Magistra; since Varania was not a bird or a fish to swim the river Min, she had to trudge nearly two miles out of the way to cross the nearest bridge. She could not even rent a public palanquin; no one would agree to carry her, an elf in servant's garb. It took almost an hour and a half to walk there, and he rarely grilled her for less than three quarters of an hour, and since the return walk took longer because she was tired, every visit to him cost her four hours or more. That was fine if it was her rest day, but he wanted reports twice a week, and even oftener when something important happened. Why did Hawke have to live so far away from her, Varania's, Master?

Wending her way through the marketplace, Varania stopped to buy a thick slice of sweet, golden-fleshed melon, to cool her incense-parched throat. Danarius gave her no money for what she did, showed her no consideration; he paid her with promises alone. The coin she used was earned by working for Hawke. Hawke paid a silver a day, above and beyond room, board, and clothing—she even got paid for rest days. Apparently nobody had told the Magistra that most maids were paid a silver a _week_—that is, those who were not slaves and therefore were paid nothing at all.

If Varania had found that position on her own, she would have thought the Chant was wrong and she'd found the Golden City in this world, not the next, she truly would have, but she had not. Danarius had found her in Ahriman's Household and told her someone had gained possession of Leto by a trick; was she willing to help him recapture her brother?

She said yes. Leto was a romantic; he dreamed of freedom without thinking what it meant. There was more than one kind of freedom, in truth—there was freedom in slavery, and then there was freedom from slavery. As a slave you were free from worry about where you would sleep, how you would eat, there was no need to search and search and search for work. If your master demanded the use of your body, well, it belonged to him, and he was the one who fed and clothed and housed you.

Freedom from slavery meant freedom to starve, freedom to beg for your meals, to sleep on the streets, to apply for work and be sneered at, turned away over and over, then to find work, and find your employer demanded that you service him on your knees in gratitude. Or plant a stolen item in your things and fire you rather than pay you at the end of the week. If, as it turned out, you _were_ a mage, you couldn't find a place as an apprentice because you couldn't afford to make the expected presents and you weren't of a prestigious family.

Yes, she would help Danarius reclaim her brother. She would not have helped him for nothing, she was not that far gone, but when he sweetened the deal by offering to make her his apprentice…that was irresistible. She tossed the melon rind into the gutter, and spat out a final seed.

Except when Varania had reached the Magistra's tower, Leto-now-Fenris was gone off to Kirkwall as bodyguard to Hawke's mother and brother. Kirkwall was a free city, and he would never return, knowing him. _No matter_, Danarius said._ You shall be my eyes and ears within that upstart's house_.

And so she was…There, she was in sight of Hawke's tower. Going in, she was told by another maid, Julia, that Aron and the Magistra were discussing household arrangements for the coming week in the garden, and they wanted Varania to join them.

In the garden, Aron was saying, "and prawns seethed in coconut milk, with citrus pudding for dessert. Ah, 'Nia, come here. The mistress wants a word with you."

The Magistra had a fan painted like a lotus blossom and was using it lazily. "If only there were a breeze—Never mind me, and you_ don't_ have to curtsey," she said, a little late, as Varania had already done so. "Please sit. Use the bench. Now. What with so many people joining the household, we're going to need more staff, and with more staff, there comes the problem of proper supervision."

Aron nodded, "We're going to need a housekeeper. You've seniority, you know how to do everything, and you're a very hard worker, I'll give you that. So we've talked it over, and the Mistress wants to offer you the position."

"You'll get a raise to go along with the increased responsibility, to three silvers a day," Hawke said, "a larger bedroom with a sitting room attached, and you won't have to do as much of the physical labor. Believe me, I know how boring housework can be—I've scrubbed plenty of dishes and floors in my life, so I try to compensate you fairly.

"However, your tendency to take off for hours at a time without permission or warning would have to stop, and stop immediately. Yes, you make up for the time by working three times as hard and staying up until the middle of the night to get things done, but if you're going to be directing others in their work, you not only have to be on hand to supervise them, you have to set a good example. You'll still have your rest day, but the rest of the time, you'll be expected to be where you can be found, whether it's in your sitting room in your off hours or at work. Day and night."

"I—don't know," she said, her mind reeling. Three silvers a day! She had thought herself so insignificant that the Magistra hadn't noticed the work she did, let along her comings and goings. Three silvers a day—that she couldn't take because she had to report to Danarius. "I—I'll have to think it over."

"Please do. I don't want to pry," Hawke said, waving the fan, "I am sure you have a reason you take off on your own, and we are not on such terms that I would expect you to confide in me. I respect your privacy. If you have some obligation, someone who is dependent on you—a child, a parent—I would be glad to make arrangements for their care. You are a good worker, Varania, and I appreciate the effort you put into what you do. I would like to reward you for it. But this offer will not stay open forever. You'll have to make up your mind, and soon."

"That's all," Aron said. "You can go now—but go and wash your feet before you track that dirt all over."

That night, Varania lay awake for a very long time. Three silvers a day as a senior servant, cash in hand at the end of the week, or keep on reporting to Danarius? _He pays in promises._ **She pays in silver.** _But I'll be his apprentice—._ **As Hadriana was, to be discarded and derided?** _I'd be a magister_. **If he keeps his word**. She wrestled with it until sleep stole her away to the Fade, and came to no clear conclusion.

* * *

A/N: A few chapters ago, Golden Naginata expressed a desire to see what was going on in Varania's head. This chapter is therefore dedicated to her, my first ever follower/favoriter. Thanks, Nag. You're the Greatest!


	25. A Couple of Letters

Most honerd Magister Danarius,

I have a chanse to be moor trustd in Magistra H's House but 1st I must show I can be moor relyabull and not leeve any time for hours without notise. So I cant come exsept on my rest days anymoor. Plis dont be angry becuse this way I wil have moor to report to you.

Yr worshepfull sarvent,

Varania

* * *

Dear Daylen:

I received your latest letter and the samples of earth two weeks ago, and only delayed answering until I could give you some sort of results from my analysis. The live sample for comparison's sake arrived in good condition, by the way, so whoever you arranged to care for it did so, and did well.

To begin with, I found no trace of any acid, alkali, frost or fire damage. Neither was there any trace of poison, whether animal, plant, mineral, metallic, or radiative. There were no diseases in the soil, no fungus or mold. There was, in fact, no trace of life whatsoever, not even the invisibly small creatures which are too simple to be called animals or plants. I made a number of experiments, here presented as a list. 'Success' and 'Failure' are not comments on the experiments themselves, but on whether the soil and its content can sustain life; whether positive or negative, no experiment which yields results is a failure.

Germinating grass seeds from Blighted soil in Blighted soil: Failure.

Germinating cress seeds from market in Blighted soil: Failure.

Germinating grass seeds from Blighted soil in comparison earth: Failure.

Germinating cress seeds from market in comparison earth: Success, and a tasty salad addition.

Introducing earthworms from garden into Blighted soil: Failure.

Introducing cutworm grubs from garden into Blighted soil: Failure.

Transplanting dandelion from garden into Blighted soil: Failure.

Feeding seeds from Blighted soil to mouse: Mouse passed seeds undigested and grew very thin before guilt prevailed. Must count as failure of objectivity and vitality both. Mouse is now assistant's pet, fed on almonds and very sleek.

Mixed Blighted soil with garden earth in 4/1 proportions, repeated experiments 1-7. Failure.

Mixed Blighted soil with garden earth in 3/1, etc. Failure.

2/1 proportions. Failure.

1/1, equal proportions. Success.

Conclusion: Blighted soil is incapable of sustaining life as it is. Revitalizing the affected soil by natural means would take enough manure, compost and earthworms to fill the Void.

Hypothesis: The life energies were ripped out of the soil by some unnatural force—in this case, the presence of darkspawn. Is that what sustains and feeds them?

You, coz, are the Grey Warden and therefore know much more about them than I: I assume darkspawn don't simply appear fully grown out of nowhere. They wear armor, have weapons, are at least somewhat skilled at fighting, all of which argues that they are the product of some sort of civilization. They must be born, cared for, fed, taught, clothed and armed. Or are they? I have a great deal of difficulty imagining someone burping a baby Genlock and changing its diapers. There are creatures in this world which are clearly magical in nature. If the darkspawn are such, should they not rather draw their life from the Fade than from our world?

Moving along, you said that Carver wrote to you asking if you had any maps to the Deep Roads, but not why he wants them. That, at least, is a question I can answer. I have engaged the services of a financial advisor, Varric Tethras by name. He has a brother named Bartrand who is planning an expedition to the Roads. Since I lured Varric away to Minrathous, Bartrand was lacking in assistance, funds, and maps, so Varric recommended Carver to him as a potential source of all three. I would be grateful for any assistance you can render my brother; he is in the process of finding himself, and needs more than just physical maps to help him on his way. Yes, it is also true that Mother has returned to my House. She sends her love to you.

Speaking of those who are lost, do you recall the healer I mention in passing a few letters back? If I were to tell you that you know him, that he has a soft spot for cats, no tolerance whatsoever for Templars, and a propensity for escaping even the most hopeless situations, would you be able to put a name to him? I can report that he is alive and well in Minrathous, and has made no attempt to escape in over two and a half months, a new record for him, I think. His experiences as a slave have made him more serious than he used to be, he says, and as his lively wit and good heart buoy my spirits daily, I can only guess at what he was like when you met him.

Besides my mother, Fenris, of whom I wrote to you before, has also returned. I fear he may be to me what Morrigan was to you-a gift I do not get to keep. Enough of that! My household has also swelled to include Merrill, an innocent, adorable, sweet...blood mage, one of the Dalish, and Feynriel, a very talented and troubled youth of mixed heritage. I am sure I will have more to tell you about them as time passes.

To finish, Warden-Commander, have you any relics or disjecta membra of gryphons left lying around from the old days? Anything will do, so long as it was once part of a real gryphon-a pelt, feathers, claws, hairs, a skeleton or bones. I mentioned creatures which could not be other than magic before, and I suspect gryphons were such creatures. A flying creature large and strong enough to carry a warrior into battle cannot exist in nature, according to my observations My searches here have yielded only frauds-lion skins with feathers sewn to the fore parts and other fakes of that ilk.

Take care of yourself, at least as well as you do others.

Your affectionate cousin,

Twyla Hawke

* * *

A/N: Again with a short chapter. I hope you can translate the first letter; if not, it is Varania's attempt to keep balanced on the fence between Hawke and Danarius, to take the housekeeper post and stay in Danarius' good graces. She plans to keep reporting to him.

What else? I updated my story description, and I would welcome feedback on it. Also, I've reached a real milestone! One hundred people are following Bought and Sold. Thank you all.


	26. A Couple of Catty Women

In the turret bower:

For their luncheon, Aron sent up a light entrée of chicken, uncooked tomatoes, and olives chopped together and served over pasta. It was a good day as far as Hawke's appetite went, these days, and with luck she would keep it down. Anders had warned her that the treatment was likely to make her feel sick, and he had been right.

"Ouch! No claws, May-May!" her mother exclaimed . Forking up a bite of chicken, Twyla looked over at her and smiled. Leandra had one kitten in her lap and another playing with the tassels on her sandals.

"Anders told me about a friend of his who—well, that part's complicated, but his friend knew nothing about cats and told Anders it was wrong to keep an animal enslaved," she told her mother.

" How ridiculous! Anyone who knows anything about the human-feline relationship knows it isn't the cat who's the slave…Speaking of which, what a little sweetheart you are, Mitchie, yes, you are…" Leandra paused. "What do you have planned for the afternoon, dear one?"

"Oh, the usual. Somehow I've gotten into a routine. I get up, have breakfast, make sure none of my experiments have done anything untoward during the night, then it's two hours with Merrill and two hours with Feynriel after that."

"With Fenris in attendance to make sure neither goes mad, turns into an abomination and attacks you," Leandra added.

"I think he gets more out of it than that," Twyla defended the elf in absentia.

"I'm sure he does. He gets to be near you for four hours—."

"Mother.." Twyla began.

"—and further his education by listening to you explain things to them." Leandra finished. "Why? What else did you think I would say?"

Hawke quirked an eyebrow and otherwise ignored that remark. "Then I have lunch with you or Aveline and often both, not to mention the Princesses of Chaos and Disorder here."

"You were asking for trouble when you named them. 'Mischief' and 'Mayhem'? No, you don't have to jump down, you little darling. Oh, you want to attack your sister? Go to it." Leandra let Mischief leap from her lap and sipped her chilled tea.

Twyla went on ticking off the details of her days. "After lunch it's four hours of concerted work with Dagna, then an hour to discuss finances with Varric, by which time dinner is ready. If I don't talk about the clinic and the outside world with Anders then, I do so afterward. On clear nights, I often stargaze; other times, I read or listen to Orana play her lute. Such is my life. Oh, I nearly forgot. Varric proposes to add to this mad whirl of debauchery a quiet hand of Diamondback or Wicked Grace now and again."

"I think you left out that Feynriel joins you for the stargazing, Fenris never fails to have some question regarding a word or a reference in his own book that requires your assistance for him to get the meaning, and Anders likes music so much he's trying to learn the lute himself." Leandra's face was turned so she seemed to be looking out over the city, yet her eyes cut sideways to observe every flicker of emotion that crossed her daughter's face.

"Merrill always joins us for stargazing, to point out Elven constellations and share how and why they were so named, Dagna is still decoding the subtleties of surface life and also needs help understanding what she reads, and Aveline likes music too—as do you. I lead a life more chaste than a Chantry Sister does, Mother."

"A pity, that," Leandra replied, "Oh, you want up now, do you, May-May? Here you go." She lifted the kitten into her lap.

"…What did you just say, Mother?"

"I mean that Tevinter inheritance law allows the Head of a House—that's you, dear one—to choose any heir who has sufficient magical ability, whether they are born of their lawful spouse, a concubine, a mistress, or even a passing roll in the hay. They can even adopt if none of their children is Gifted. Of course, they assume the head will usually be a man, but in essence, any child of the Head of the House is automatically legitimate.

"There is no man of magisterial rank in all the Tevinter Empire who I would be glad to see you marry, not_ one_ I would consider worthy of your hand—but it would make me profoundly unhappy were you to go through life alone, sleeping in a cold and empty bed, never to know the joy of holding your babies in your arms."

"…." Hawke's face was contorted with shock and unbelief.

"Now Feynriel is still a stripling, but in a year or two, he will be a very handsome young lad. I think the world of Fenris. While we traveled together, I got to know him rather well, and he was always ready to listen to me ramble on about our lives. Whenever I spoke of you, though, he paid more than mere polite attention. He drank in my words as thought they were as needed as air. Varric, now—."

"What? Varric, too?" Hawke interjected.

Leandra ignored her outburst. "—has many excellent qualities. He's intelligent, charming, witty, and has a mind as twisty as a corkscrew. In his own way, he's very attractive. I like him very much. While I've known Anders the least amount of time, he reminds me of your father in his determination to be free. He has a real compassion and concern for his patients and how people live, judging from the dinner conversation you mentioned. It cannot be denied that he is also a very handsome man—although I think his hair is starting to thin into a widow's peak high up on his forehead."

"He is not more handsome than Fenris," Hawke protested, "—but, wait, what _exactly_ are you saying, Mother?"

"At this time, nothing. I only want to put these ideas into your head, so you can turn them over and do what you do, which is to make them _uniquely_ your own." Mayhem, from her place in Leandra's lap, made it known that she wanted to be petted **NOW**, and Leandra obliged. The kitten responded with a purr so loud it could be heard across the room.

After a few moments when the only sound was that expression of feline contentment, Hawke said, a bit hesitant and awkward. "…Are there precedents for female Heads of Household to so flout tradition and do so successfully?" She shook her head. "I didn't put that very well, but it expresses my state of mind, so I will not amend it."

"You're the researcher, not I, my dear one." Leandra switched from scratching the little cat under the chin to rubbing the short-cropped fur on her nose, with a corresponding increase in purr volume. "If by chance there isn't, I am sure you could set one. I have faith in you. But let us drop the subject, for I can see it makes you uncomfortable."

Twyla closed her eyes, reached up to brush the fuzz sprouting on her scalp. The question was not whether she wanted children of her own, but whether her health would allow it. Anders was very good at removing the skin lesions which cropped up, and there were fewer and fewer of them as the potions did their work, but the lump in her breast remained, regenerating even as the healer destroyed its layers. Anders had told her the night before that he feared only surgery could remove it—and then he had explained what that meant. Surgery was the last resort, when death was imminent, because it was too dangerous. People often bled to death or died of shock under the knife. Even should they survive the operation itself, there was the likelihood of dying from an infection. There were things no healing magic could treat, no potion could cure.

Pushing thoughts of her mortality aside, she smiled at her mother, scooping Mischief up off the floor to cuddle her. The kitten squirmed, then found a position she liked and melted into the caresses, thrumming with purrs. "I will think over what you said. But there must be some reason you asked specifically about this afternoon."

"Actually, yes, " From being a soft little ball of purring delight, May-May transformed, as kittens will, into a slashing, biting maniac with what seemed like seventeen paws with steel tipped claws. "No, you bad girl. If you're going to act like that, I'm putting you down on the floor. I was hoping we would have a chance to go through your wardrobe. The fabrics you chose are very good quality, and I understand why you don't want to adhere to the dress codes around here—it's so dreary going around in all black, like a permanent funeral. However, the way your dresses are cut—well, they might as well be flour sacks, not to mention that you've given up corsets altogether. I know the person who called you a Chasind washerwoman was no friend of yours—but she had a point." Leandra offered up an apologetic smile. "I am sorry, dear, but honestly, you can do better."

"It's true, I do favor loose and unstructured clothes," Twyla replied, "but I have my reasons. First, even though I'm healed, ever since I was burned, anything too tight or stiff might as well be a hair shirt like the hard-line Chanters wear under their robes. Some days, even a breast band is too binding. Lightweight and loose garments are all I _can _wear."

"Oh—oh, darling, I'm sorry, I had no idea." Her mother came over to sit on the bench next to her and hug her gingerly. "Why did you not tell me?"

"Because with all your other sorrows, I don't want you to have to worry about me. It's not as if I'm sick," she lied, "I'm just oversensitive. Like the marquise of the story who couldn't sleep for the dried bean under the mattresses."

"Ah, that old tale. I remember you asking why the tower of mattresses didn't tumble down like a too-tall stack of hay bales. But surely there is some dressmaker that could, well, design something for you with a little more style."

"And that's the other reason," Twyla shook her head. "I saw a dressmaker's workroom by chance, when a door was left open. Every dressmaker, whether she be the smiling and delightful sort, or the sycophantic kind with flattery on her lips, or the scornful, haughty one who's practically a mage with a pair of shears—in their work rooms toil dozens of slaves going blind in half-light, their backs growing hunched and their legs atrophying for lack of use, their hands growing crippled from repetitive motion.

"They work eighteen to twenty hours a day, with no rest days, and they sleep on the floor where they sit all day, fed worse than we would feed a dog. They go from being children to old and arthritic in twenty-five years, through their working conditions and their living conditions, and when they are useless, they are sold to mages, to be sacrificed for what little life is left in them. I cannot stop the practice, but I refuse to support it."

"Oh, Maker forbid…" Leandra looked down at her own Minrathian gown, at the delicate laces and fine beading. "Sometimes I almost forget—but it is everywhere, and in everything. So where do you get—Twyla, are you sewing them yourself?"

"On my rest days," Hawke smiled. "Orana helps, as does one of the laundry women. I never was any good at patterns and piecing, you know that, but I can sew a straight seam well enough. I just sew two lengths together at the shoulders and down the sides."

"My dearest daughter, yet again, I must tell you that I am very proud of you, and a little ashamed of myself. Where do you keep your sewing box? I haven't forgotten how to sew either—and I _can_ follow a pattern. I'll have to see if I can't impart a little style to your flour sacks."

Someone rapped on the door at the bottom of the stairs. "My ladies?" It was Fenris. No one else had a voice half as sensuous. "I ask your pardon for interrupting you, but the district morgue has sent the Watch with a message for the Magistra. They beg that she might come and identify a body for them."

"Come on up, Fenris," Hawke commanded, setting Mischief down on the bench.

"A body? Whose? Not one of _our_ people, Maker, please, no!" Leandra exclaimed.

"No, not one of our people," Twyla predicted, "Quite the opposite. It is Hadriana, as I have been anticipating for some days."

Fenris reached the turret bower. His skin crackled with faint bluish sparks and his face mingled anger and triumph. "So they believe. It seems to be a case of suicide. In the whole of the city, no one else could be found to go and look at her face. Say the word, and I will go in your stead; I beg it of you as a boon."

"You may come with me," she said, skirting the table to join him at the head of the stairs. "But I will go, too. I destroyed her; I must _and_ shall look upon my handiwork."

* * *

A/N: Well, last week was a very good week for writing and this week, not so good. Here is my latest offering, and I'm going to go read all those chapters I've gotten updates for now. Bye!


	27. Blue-White

From The Visitor's Guide to Minrathous, 8th edition. When touring the Arcanists' Hall, be sure to check out the Portrait Gallery. Among the many works worthy of attention is Ambroto's _Municipal Water Board, 9 Dragon: 32_, more popularly known as 'A Hawke among Magpies'. This group portrait of the thirteen publicly elected members of the Board includes the earliest known portrayal of Twyla Hawke, shown seated third from the right. Many have commented that while Hawke looks uncomfortably intelligent, the others simply look uncomfortable. Ambroto said that he painted what he saw, and that year, eight of the members, including Hawke, were new. Five of the previous Board were killed while trying to assassinate Hawke and three resigned shortly thereafter. Small wonder the 'magpies' look ill at ease…

* * *

Blue-white. In life, Hadriana had azure eyes, pink cheeks, red-brown hair, but in death she was all blue-white, from the clouded corneas of her half-open eyes, her bloodless skin, the bluing-washed sheet that lay over her, the magically conjured frost crystals in her hair, (so necessary to preserve a corpse in the heat of Tevinter), all blue-white, all. Blue-white like lyrium. Blue and white.

"It is she," Hawke said, staring at the still, cold face. "How did it happen, and where was she found?"

"She was found in the river by the Bridge of the Blessed," the coroner replied. "Everything in the river washes up there, eventually."

"So no one knows where or how she went into it? There were no witnesses to say whether she jumped, lost her balance, or was pushed? She left no notes as to her state of mind?" Hawke transferred her stare to the coroner's face.

"There are not, but those who saw her in the tavern, a wretchedly low place, say that she was sufficiently melancholic to do away with herself. All bodies must be cremated, lest they become possessed and walk as a corpse, but a suicide cannot receive any rites. Her remains will be committed to the wasteland and her soul to the Void. "

"Perhaps she did commit suicide, but would it not be better to err on the side of mercy?" Hawke asked. "The Maker's judgment supersedes that of mortals, and he may find…extenuating circumstances."

"If you will have it so, Magistra Hawke. The certificate _can_ be amended," The coroner looked at her expectantly.

"Varric, would you be so good as to see to it, and all other suitable arrangements?" She turned to the dwarf. Very wealthy people never carried their own money. "I would like a moment alone, to say goodbye."

"Of course," the coroner said, and led Varric to his office, leaving Fenris, Anders, and Hawke alone in the chamber with the body.

"Anders, can you determine whether she really did drown, or if she died of some other cause?" the Magistra asked.

"Yes…" He called up a yellow orb of light, played it over the dead chest. "Yes, she drowned, but she was so full of alcohol that her liver could be set alight. Nasty stuff, too. She well deserved this end, from all I have heard of her."

"Why show her such mercy?" Fenris asked, glancing from the dead woman to the live one. "She would not have done the same for you."

"Because what she did, she did because I manipulated her into it. If you drop an egg on the kitchen floor, it's the floor which smashes it, but your hand which caused the fall." Twyla explained.

"I knew there was some plot afoot, for Varania was too anxious over my going to the Palatine, and asked twice if I had changed my plans for the day. Knowing, I was on the defense before I got there. I baited her with sweet words and reactions that would incense her further. Seeing she was lightheaded, I used a touch of telekinesis to impede the blood flow to her brain and made her faint in front of everyone, then begged them not to gossip about it. Was there ever a surer way to be certain all of them talked? The only way Danarius could stem the humiliation was to throw her out.

"At my behest, the Palatine refused to refund her money—I told them if they wanted to keep me as a patroness, they would enforce their rules. It wasn't hard to convince them, as she had behaved obnoxiously to them already. It was money she could not afford to lose. You both know what happened the day she came to beg me to take her in. It was so very easy, as she was as brittle, transparent and hollow as a frozen soap bubble. Frighteningly easy….With all that, surely I can grant her the mercy of proper funeral rites, as I hope the Maker may look on me with mercy some day.

"But come, it is so cold in here that we can see our breath, and you, Fenris, are stamping your feet—no wonder, for you wore those boots without soles. Have you any final thoughts before she is consigned to the fire?"

"Thoughts?" He shook his head. "I thought to spit in her face, or some other such gesture, but it would be as hollow as she was. This is not Hadriana—it is but meat and bone. This is as strange a thing as I have ever known—as strange as encountering a mage capable of kindness," he looked Twyla directly in the eyes, held the contact, "As much as I still hate her, despite the fury that burns in me, I feel something akin to pity for her now. She was petty, pathetic, and mediocre. I could not see that until I was free."

* * *

A/N: All right, I was trying to work up a big action scene to end this chapter, but it wasn't working so I'm posting this and starting over. The opening quote will bear directly on the next chapter, so let's call it foreshadowing. Hope you like the feels, signing off and heading to bed.


	28. A Big Fight Scene

Anders might have been—no, scratch that, _would_ have been disgusted by the elf eyeing Hawke so boldly and soulfully, but for the dark fear which ate at him—that he could not defeat the malignancy within her breast. All he had done so far was stop it from growing any larger; he had not shrunk it by a hair's breadth. In addition to that, because he had begun at the part of it nearest the surface, the tumor was growing deeper into the tissue, and if it began burrowing into her chest cavity underneath—not even removing the breast would stop it then. It was as if the thing were aware and trying to save itself by retreating to a bolt hole, but not intelligent enough to understand that if it killed Hawke, then it died too.

He was miserable, and he could tell no one. On the day they met he had 'fallen in love' with her. Compared to what he felt for now, close to three months later, now that he knew her, that was a shallow infatuation… He had never met anyone so brilliant, whose mind made so many connections, who never ceased wondering about everything. She wasn't the wisest person in the world, she did good in the world as much because she was angry as she was compassionate, she was sometimes so damn naïve—.

To fail, to_ lose_ her—as terrible as his own personal grief would be, the knowledge that Thedas would have lost the most remarkable mind of their time, someone who was meant to change the world, to make it better, and he was convinced that she was and that would—if she only lived. Losing her would impoverish the future, and no one would know except the few who knew her personally.

Such were his thoughts as Varric rejoined them and they passed from the morgue out into the cul-de-sac where they had left the porters with Hawke's palanquin. The palanquin was there; the porters weren't.

"Hold," Fenris said, holding up a hand. "Something is wrong." Advancing slowly, he drew his sword to pry open the palanquin door. The two porters were stuffed inside, an untidy jumble of limbs, their throats cut and dripping. "Venhedis!" Springing back, he narrowly avoided a lightning bolt.

There were five mages and about twenty others, at least a dozen of them warriors. Reaching for his staff, Anders stepped in front of Hawke and readied a fireball.

Aveline had warned them before they left that day, "Should you be attacked, watch out for Hawke. She really does need a bodyguard. Give her a moment to think, and she might be able to come up with something amazing—last time, she made all the metal our attackers had on them flake away into rust. That ended the battle straight away, when they found themselves without armor or weapons—some of them had on very amusing smallclothes. But like as not, she'll get confused and overwhelmed. By the time He got around to fighting instincts and combat skills, the Maker must have decided He'd given her enough gifts already. _Protect her_."

Now the moment had come. On the flanking side, Varric brought Bianca down off his shoulder. Fenris was already in the thick of it, hacking and slicing with his greatsword, lyrium markings glowing blue. Backed against the wall, Hawke was casting… what looked to be the same silencing spell she used to ensure privacy in her turret. This, it seemed, was going to be one of those times she got confused and overwhelmed, for she was casting it over and over again.

Yet as he let loose with a bolt from his staff, he noticed that many of the small army—great, more were dropping down from the rooftops—were disoriented, unnerved. Instead of closing on them, on Fenris as he sped among them like a knife blade in a whirlwind, they backed away, whipping their heads around wildly. Of course! _They did not hear each other_. Deprivation of that sense made them clumsy, led them to hit each other rather than Fenris. The mages among them could not cast spells that called for spoken words, as the Silence stole away their voices. As Hawke's spell was a passive one which did no damage, their shields did nothing to block it. And—was it possible their archers' arrows were slowing down as they passed into the zone of Silence?

_Yes,_ it was. That meant Varric's bolts were slower, too, but they couldn't hear the crossbow's ratchet and the 'shfff!' of their flight. His spell Tempest still worked just fine, shocking those it hit into shudders and convulsions.

Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence redoubled, tripled, fourfold. Within their little bubble they could still hear—that left Fenris out there, but he seemed to be managing as he severed a hand off an opponent with a swing that stove in the shield of the next man. Given his moderate height and build, one would expect the elf to be a rogue, not a warrior. Fenris was, it seemed, made of steel cable, from the strength with which he wielded his blade.

But more and still more fighters poured out of the surrounding buildings, joining the eerily soundless fray. They, too, became disoriented. More shenanigans...Hawke was a_ genius_.

Hold, now what was she doing? Hawke stopped casting, picked up a pebble from the ground, chucked it at the elf. When Fenris turned to look at her, she beckoned him. Taking a running start, he dropped to his knees and slid, taking advantage of a break in the massed foe to fetch up among their legs.

"Brace yourselves!" Hawke yelled, _and reversed the spell_. All the sound around them vanished—while out there, the sheer force of sound hit the small army like a boulder from a trebuchet. While they couldn't hear it for themselves, they could see the effects and feel the ground shake as though wracked by an earthquake. The heavily armored went down like trees or heaps of pots and pans, while the mages and rogues were sent flying, some limp and others thrashing.

"Damn, Hawke, you don't mess around," Varric said admiringly into the (now quite normal) silence. "I think _this_ guy's brains are leaking out his ears. Hang on, there are still a few left alive."

Alive, yes, but not in much condition to get up and give them any more trouble. Anders might have had some compunction about going around and stabbing people when they were down, moaning, clutching their heads and crying out, 'I can't hear! I can't hear!' but Fenris had no such compunction. He went from crumpled body to crumpled body, making sure they were corpses by sticking his sword into vital parts of them and leaning heavily.

"What was that you did, exactly?" Varric asked while going through the pockets of one unfortunate, "and how did you think of it?"

"Well, Merrill and I have been studying her Eluvian, and since we're trying to figure out how sound is transmitted, we play around with sound. It's all vibration passed along through matter, whether it's air or water or stone. The more solid something is, the better it works. Sound itself doesn't actually exist unless something is there to hear it. I modified that spell so works rather like...damming up a river. The vibrations are held off, and they build up like the water pressure behind the dam, so when it's all released at once... I didn't think it would work quite this powerfully, but I never tried it outside the workroom before."

"Your workroom is a quiet place," Anders commented, "or it usually is, any how."

Fenris was continuing to clear the battlefield of any survivors. Stopping at one of the injured mages, he reached down, his markings flaring up to surround him with a ghostly aura, and plunged his hand into the man's chest. With a horrible gushing sound, he wrenched-and pulled out the mage's heart. He stalked the cul-de-sac like a rangy wolf, and found someone who was struggling to get to her feet. One of her wrists dangled limply, broken.

"Can you still hear?' he snarled at the injured and frightened woman. At her nod, he continued. "Whose hirelings were you? The Water Board's?"

"Yes..." she offered.

"Were any of them here?" he demanded.

"The magisters...they wanted to be sure she, Magistra Hawke, that is, that she was eliminated."

"Five fewer magisters in this city," He grinned, again, wolfishly. "I call that a good start. Take this back to the rest of the Board," He reached out, shoved the gory, dripping heart down the gorget of her armor, "and tell them what happened here. The same will come to anyone who threatens Hawke. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Then go." He helped her on her way with a shove.

"It's good the morgue is right here," Varric observed. "It really saves time. I think I'll just go tell them they have more...Uh-oh."

Anders was looking at the mage whose heart Fenris had ripped out, thinking. There was no hole in the man's robes, no bloodstains on the chest. What if-but at Varric's exclamation he turned.

Perhaps it was inevitable, given that this was the Tevinter Empire and there was so much blood spilled and so many dead mages lying around not to mention that they were standing right in front of a morgue, but the Abomination to end all Abominations was assembling itself from the corpses and body parts, accompanied with grisly schlorking and snapping noises, reaching out to gather in more corpses to make itself bigger and taller until it towered over the cul-de-sac, dwarfing the buildings around them. Limbs stuck randomly out of the hideous mass, flopping and twitching grotesquely. It dripped with blood, bile and other unpleasant bodily fluids

"Andraste's knickers..." Anders breathed. Readying a Firestorm spell to hit it with, he let fly and followed it up with blasts from his staff. Varric was likewise winding Bianca's mechanism for all he was worth, and Fenris hacked away at a leg thicker than the trunk of a Alienage's Vhenadahl tree, sending gobbets of meat and splinters of bone flying with no apparent effect on it. It was ignoring the volley of arrows and his Firestorm only made it smell liked cooked meat. No good. What about Hawke?

Glancing at her, he saw she was frozen. Okay, this was what Aveline had meant by overwhelmed and confused. It was written all over her face.

The Abomination had absorbed all the available corpses around into itself, and now it stretched, shrugged, looked about-and reached down to pick up Hawke.

Lifting her up to its face, which had more eyes than a fly, more mouths than a...he didn't know what, and spoke with many voices all at once.

"Ridiculous, feeble little wretch, what do you think you will accomplish? You run about with your ideas like a child...chasing after butterflies, whichever is brightest and closest. You think to light the way through the darkness, but your life is briefer than the flash of a firefly, and the night...is very long. The sparks you strike will burn out faster than you do."

"Th-then," Hawke stuttered in a tiny voice, "I w-will strike more and more, until _one_ of them starts a bonfire. Even if I fail I will have_ tried_."

The Abomination was starting to fall apart under its own weight. "Haaahh!" it growled, shaking her so she flailed like...Ser Pounce shaking a mouse came to mind...and threw her down, collapsing on her in a pile of shredded flesh and splintered bone.

"Hawke!" the three men cried out as one, digging through the disgusting debris until they uncovered her, her arms curled around her head in protection.

"Is she all right? Do something, Mage!" Fenris snarled at him.

"Hawke?" Anders asked.

She uncurled enough to ask, again in a very small voice, "Is it over?"

"Yes," he said, checking her. "Yes, it's over."

"I'm afraid it's only just beginning, in the larger scheme of things." Varric commented.

* * *

A/N: I'm not that good at writing action, but I hope this works.


	29. You Can't Make An Omelette

"Difficulties with the authorities?" Fenris asked in response to Varric's question. "Hawke is a magister. There were four of us and over forty of them, including five magisters. So overwhelming a victory…" He let it trail off and snorted. "They will be most respectful. It is the friends and kin of the magisters who will prove difficult, but not this day."

"More enemies," Twyla accepted the bucket of water from Anders and washed the rapidly putrifying remains of the Abomination from her face and hands. Luckily her dress was dark enough to hide the stains. "Although this was an unprovoked attack without a formal challenge. Wonderful. Is there not a single rational person in Minrathous outside of my own Tower?"

"There's my cousin Thorold. He's a bank representative here, and his fiancée is—hey, I didn't tell you about her. Her name is Maevaris Tilani, and she's a magister too. Nice lady. I'll have to introduce you." Varric said. "Right now, though even if the authorities aren't going to make trouble, I'd just as soon get out of here. I guess we'll have to find you a palanquin, since yours is...unavailable." In fact, it was now kindling.

"Bugger that," Hawke commented crudely but convincingly. "I'm perfectly capable of walking. I've been doing so without help for twenty-five years. I'm the single richest woman_ and_ the richest single woman in all of Minrathous, if not the Empire, and polite society can go to the Void if it disapproves of what I do. Let's go."

She started off. Varric followed, but Anders stopped Fenris with a hand on his arm. "That thing you did, when you ripped the heart out of the last magister without breaking the skin—was it easily done?"

"Easy?" Fenris pulled away, glaring at him. There was but one mage he trusted, and that, of course, was Hawke. Anders he would tolerate, but _only _just, and this was pushing it. "Yes, it was _easy_—if you don't count the pain of having lyrium burned into my flesh in order that I might do it at all."

"Can you do it again?"

"Of course, but I won't," Fenris spat. "In battle is one thing. I am a bodyguard; protecting Hawke is my duty. Outside of that, I refuse. I will not perform on command, even for Hawke." It was bad enough being a monstrosity without being made to do tricks like a performing monkey. Danarius had enjoyed having Fenris show off what he could do.

"Get over yourself for once, and _listen_!" Anders shot back. "I'm not asking you to _entertain_ me, or out of idle curiosity. I'm asking as a_ healer_. If it were to _save a life_, could you remove a growth from a person's body that way?"

"I—do not know," Fenris had taken a breath to yell, but Anders' reason had quieted him. "I have never been called upon to try. Killing is simple. I do not know if I could tell the difference between healthy tissue and diseased. You would do better to ask Hawke before involving me. With her gift for perception—." Something in Anders' expression, a stony seriousness unlike the healer's usual penchant for joking charm, made him pause. "Unless it is Hawke herself who is…Is it? Is she ill?"

"I can't tell you who it is without permission. It would be a terrible breach of trust." Anders' mouth twisted. "Now let go of me!."

In his alarm, Fenris had seized the lapels of Anders' robe and twisted, half-strangling the mage. He let go. "That means yes, for were it someone else, you would have said no. What is it? What afflicts her? Is it mortal?"

"I cannot tell you more—I should not have told you as much—without her permission. I will not ask her on the public street or say anything else to you now. Let's get home, and tonight we will discuss what may be done. I will say this, though. I have often heard you speak disparagingly of mages and the contamination magic spreads. I tell you now, when you consider how easy it would be for her to make a bargain with the darkness, given how much she could pay for someone to sacrifice to regain her health—I do not believe she has ever even thought of doing so, much less considered it a possibility."

"I have not doubted Hawke's strength of character or goodness of heart in months," he replied truthfully. "It's the rest of you I don't trust."

"What's keeping you two?" Varric called to them.

"Just a moment," Anders replied. "Later," he promised Fenris.

It was indeed rather later. Fenris found he had no appetite for dinner, and instead haunted the kitchen. Hawke, ill? —Very likely mortally so, from how Anders had spoken of making bargains or using blood magic. Now he understood just why Hawke, who so hated slavery that she sewed her own clothes (he had overheard her conversation with Leandra before he knocked) would have bought Anders—the only other slave she had acquired since she bought Aron, Orana, and he himself. It was because she had needed a healer that badly.

Hawke, ill, possibly dying…Even the apple dessert Aron was demonstrating to the cook did not tempt his appetite. Small wonder she would hear no talk of love, that she was concerned lest she hurt him. Her death would darken his life beyond measure.

There was no question about whether he would try or not. The only question was, could he do any good? If only he could practice somehow first! From the way people…reacted when he reached within them, his touch caused excruciating pain. To grope blindly about in Hawke's body—he did not know where the growth was located, but Anders must—even were she drugged, he would….

Now he did not simply lack appetite. He was nauseated. Perhaps being in the kitchen around food smells was not a good idea at the moment. He stood up, made as if to leave—and his glance fell on the bowl of eggs, fresh from the cold room, waiting to be broken and whipped into a froth.

An idea occurred to him. He reached out, pulled the bowl closer. Aron looked up from the lesson he was giving. "They're not cooked yet, if that's what you fancy."

"It isn't. May I?"

"What are you going to do with them?" asked the cook.

"Separate the yolks from the whites." He picked up one of the oviods.

"But you don't have to do that for this recipe," Aron told him, bewildered.

"It's as an experiment." Fenris replied.

"An experiment? You, too?! Is there anyone left in this house who doesn't go experimenting?"

* * *

A/N: I think most of my readers already figured out that this was going here.


	30. Without Breaking Eggs

"Of course you may finish telling him, and of course we should make the attempt," Hawke said, but there was something flat in her voice.

"You are disappointed in me, and rightly so," Anders looked down. They were in the turret, of course, and it was after dinner. Hawke had bathed immediately upon their return and put on a blue-black garment that rustled, a head scarf in the same color but transparently fine. She wore it now; the sky was starting to take on that same blue-black.

"It would not be long before the secret of my illness got out, anyway, at least here in my household. Mother—my mother suspects, although as yet she has said nothing. No. It is my vanity, that is all. Looking in the mirror now… I—I was never pretty, not since I was very small, but at least I was what they call a handsome girl, a handsome woman. People admired me. Men did double-takes, sometimes, when they saw me. I never knew how much that meant to my self-esteem until today. Walking back home, no one gave me a second glance. Not of that kind. I'm bald and I'm growing gaunt, growing old and ugly. Fenris admires me anyway, or at least he did. Now that he knows, now that he's going to help treat me—you work with the sick and the injured all the time. You can't tell me that doesn't change how you see people, when you get under the skin to all the bodily functions and dysfunctions. It must disgust you."

"It's all part of life," Anders demurred. "You need somebody to spoon pap into your mouth and wipe your bottom for you at both ends of it, and in the middle, like as not we're the ones doing the spooning and the wiping. It's a wonder the race hasn't died out, we're all so disgusting. Look, Hawke…right now you're not at your best, but hair does grow back and you'll put on flesh again. You are still young and—." _You have the beauty of a saint, all extraneous material pared away until one can see the soul under your skin_. All right, he couldn't say _that_. "And honestly, to base all of this on how people looked at you or didn't look on the walk home? A lot of them were slaves, and not encouraged to look at people. Plus you were walking in the middle of three blood-stained men, with Fenris looking like he was ready to murder anyone who looked at you at all—could it be that you're overreacting?"

She smiled wryly. "There you go, making me feel better. Yes, it could be, but—if I am rid of this, will I be able to have children? And no, I am not thinking of anyone in particular as the father. It is a very long way from liking admiration to starting a family. My mother would like grandchildren someday, but I—. Please do not joke and answer as fully and honestly as you can."

"Honestly, Hawke? I don't know. You definitely shouldn't try until you recover your accustomed health, and that…may be a while. First things first. I will go find Fenris."

"Of course."

Anders found the frost-haired elf in the kitchen, of all places, where he had a captivated audience watching him…play with eggs. There were three bowls in front of him on the table: an empty one, one full of broken, empty eggshells, and one full of raw eggs. His gauntlets lay on the table, off to one side. Directly before him was an egg on an egg cup, and he was scowling at it.

The knot of people watched him in silence, too rapt in anticipation to notice the healer's approach. "I've never seen anything like it!" whispered a maid. "It's almost as good as being a mage!"

That made Fenris scowl even harder, and someone shushed the girl. Fenris reached out, his hand cupped and glowing white as his hair, to scoop it_ through_ the egg. Palm up, he displayed the yolk, perfectly round in its glistening membrane, yellow-gold like a harvest moon, and perfectly intact as well.

The servants applauded, and the look of disgust on his face deepened for a fraction of a second. Letting the yolk slide from his palm into the bowl of raw eggs, he took the egg from the cup, turning it to make sure it was unbroken, then cracked it into the bowl with the rest of the egg. All that was left in the shell was the white and the stringy bit, no trace of yellow yolk at all. "That's the last of them," he said.

"What are you doing?" Anders asked.

"Practicing," Fenris told him. "It for you to tell me what I am practicing for."

"Right. That—actually, what you're practicing could be exactly what will work…My workroom, this way." He led the elf there, then cast an ordinary charm of Silence on the room to be sure of privacy. "Hawke is willing to try if we are. As for what is wrong, she has a cancer of the breast which grows as quickly as I can eradicate it…" he explained at some length, answering Fenris' questions as they came. To give credit where credit was due, the bodyguard understood. Anders might not like him, but he was far from stupid.

"So tonight, once the household is quiet—give it at least until midnight, and then perhaps half an hour, we will go up to Hawke's bedchamber. I'll be bringing all the potions I can carry; there'll be soap and water, clean towels, and a bottle of this—it's pure, distilled alcohol. We will all be washing up, you, me, and Hawke. You may not be in contact with her insides for long, but I want to rule out any chance of infection."

Fenris nodded. "Lest the invading organisms infest her bloodstream."

"Yes. When we begin—there are no two ways around this. Hawke will be naked to the waist and dosed up with as many potions for pain as she can safely take. They'll make her drowsy but not unconscious. You're going to have to feel, from the outside, what you'll be removing before you do it. You're acting as a healer tonight, so whether you like what you see or you don't, it's not appropriate to show it. The first is creepy and the second is demoralizing. Neither is good for the patient. There has to be a bond of trust between them and their healer. Remember that it's Hawke, and that right now she is fragile in many ways. Be positive, if you can, or at least confident."

"I believe I understand."

"Good. After that, I'm going to cast a spell on you so that you can see her bodily aura. That will show you exactly where the lump is, how large it is, and what shape it is. It's a fairly simple spell, but it eats up mana, so I'll have lyrium potions on hand for that and for afterwards. Then you'll do what you do. I hope it will be as easy as the eggs—the lump is harder and denser than the surrounding breast, but it has no membrane like a yolk. All I can say is, remove as much as you can as swiftly as you can, because she will start to bleed internally immediately.

"Once you're done, I will go to work on the bleeding. I will be calling on benevolent spirits to help, so with your temporarily enhanced vision, you'll be seeing things. Not all of them will look nice; I'll only be calling on the good spirits of the Fade, but others will be attracted by the pain and the blood. I tell you this so you don't panic, get the wrong impression, and do something that will jeopardize the healing process. They will not be here physically, only spiritually." Anders finished.

"Again, I believe I comprehend. You and I bear no love for one another, but tonight, for Hawke's sake, it is required that we work together and trust each other. For Hawke's sake, I will do so." Fenris nodded.

"Thank you. For tonight, let there be a truce." The two exchanged looks that meant: I know exactly how you feel about her, and I'm not budging an inch.

* * *

A/N: Fast Update FTW! Short And Sweet!


	31. Fading In and Out

Feynriel slept and dreamed. Life in the Tower was so very different than in the Alienage. For one thing, there was always enough to eat, but for another, he was busy as he never had been at home. While higher math was not a magic cure-all, Hawke had been at least partly right about what he needed to keep his demons at bay; his days were very full now. With both Merrill and Anders teaching him conventional magic, his mana did not spill over at night as it was wont to at home, and lessons with Hawke were intellectually stimulating, to say the least. _Her _spells, though, used so little mana that they wouldn't stir the hairs on the back of a Templar's neck.

His dream thoughts blew him around like a dandelion seed on a puff of breath amid the inhabitants of the Fade and its landscape, although in some cases they were the same. As he drifted, though, he became aware of various spirits who were gently rippling in one direction, bearing him in their wake. He saw Fenris and Anders, and he knew he was seeing through the Veil into their own reality, which happened sometimes. It was worse when he saw through into other people's dreams.

Anders and Fenris were unaware of him as they filled a couple of boxes with various potion bottles. Where would they be taking them in the middle of the night? They were also peculiarly tense—well, given their mutual dislike, maybe it wasn't so peculiar. He hovered over their shoulders, watching each of them heft a box and left Anders workroom, following them down the halls and up the stairs of the main tower, all the way up to Hawke's suite, not up to the turret, but through a door Feynriel had never been through, into a bedroom.

Was this Hawke's bedroom? Hawke was certainly in it.

_What_ was going on here?

It was a room so simple as to be called austere, with plain walls, a grass cloth rug on the floor, a low platform bed of some dark wood, made up with plain linens, a simple chair draped in towels sitting on the bare part of the floor. A table next to the chair had cans of water, a washbasin, and other accouterments of washing. That was all; no art on the walls, no luxuries, nothing personal. Hawke herself sat in the chair, wrapped in a bathrobe and looking as though-as though one of the kittens had fallen off the tower and been killed, or something. No-not as if it had already died, but as though it was terribly hurt and she was afraid for it. Yet there was no hurt kitten to be seen.

"I'm ready," she told them, one hand holding her shawl close at her throat. Seeing her thus, drawn in on herself and almost... shrunken was frightening. He missed the reply as various small sprites rushed around him, gathering-waiting?

Now the men washed up, Andes giving Fenris a few instructions like, "Be sure to scrub very well under your nails," which the warrior took in better stride than Feynriel would have believed. and finally finishing by rinsing off with something from a bottle. Then there was a long and awkward silence.

"All right, then," Hawke said at last, and-took off the shawl. Which was actually a towel. Under which Hawke was wearing a skirt on her lower half and nothing on top. That was-he'd never-he had seen desire demons, and wood cuts, and he was dreaming now, but Hawke's nakedness was not the stone-like immobility of a demoness, or globe-like breasts as in printed pictures. Her breasts were more tear drop shaped rather than like two halves of a melon glued to her chest, and they moved when she did. He wanted to keep watching. He wanted to turn away. He wasn't sure what he wanted, but he knew he understood none of what was going on.

He knew how Hawke looked, though. Like someone who was about to be violated. Feynriel was not the only one sensitive to this, though because Fenris turned his head away, and said, sounding quite tired and just as miserable as Hawke looked. "I can't do this."

"Fenris," Anders began, and there were embers of fury under that calm, reassuring voice.

"Not with—Hawke, you look like we're about to _rape_ you. I've seen too many…I'm sorry. I can't." Fenris turned away.

"I—," Hawke began. Her voice was hesitant, came out slower and thicker than he had ever heard it. "I used to be almost as tough as Carver, when it came to getting hurt. I was never seriously injured, though, not until I was burned while fighting the Qunari. I don't bear pain as well anymore. Maybe if we wait a few minutes, the potions will…"

"If you took them as I instructed, waiting will ensure they're wearing off as you need them most," Anders interrupted. "What if…" He took a roll of bandage from his gear, wound off a length, "you can't watch what is going on. Work with me here. Anticipation only heightens fear and pain." Turning the bandage into a blindfold, he wrapped Hawke's eyes. "I would offer to tie your wrists to the chair as well, to better help you hold still, but I fear that would only enhance the resemblance to a… Anyhow, I won't unless you ask it of me."

"I would rather not," she said. "but if you could make a wad from that cloth for me to bite on, if I have to…"

"No easier said than done," Anders wound off more bandage. "Now, Fenris," His voice cooled, because detached. "As comparison—and by your leave, Hawke—you should feel what a normal breast's structure is like. Here, this ridge of tissue supports…"

Hawke nodded, and Feynriel observed, beginning to realize that rather than some sick sexual game, this was instead meant to cure the Magistra of something so terrible it was kept the darkest secret.

The manual examination over, Anders stepped back. "Now for the spell," His fingers wove a glittering mesh of magic in the air, drawing still more sprites and spirits in to watch what was going on. Whispering arcane words, he drew the mesh over Fenris' head—and the elven warrior's markings flared up, bright enough to chase the shadows from all corners of the room, incinerating the spell.

"That—Fenris, don't fight what I'm doing. I need all the mana I've got—don't_ waste_ it like this," Anders chided. "For Hawke's sake—trust me."

"I did not do so on purpose," Fenris threw back. After a pause he muttered, "I do not recall what Danarius did to me in detail, but this is too close to my imaginings for comfort."

Anders stepped close to the elf, and said, not in a whisper which could carry, but softly, softer than cats' footsteps, "And if Hawke dies from this cancer, what will be your comfort then?"

"Do it," Fenris ordered, his eyes snapping shut. "And be quick about it."

This time the spell took, and Fenris' eyes glowed white when he opened them. Blinking, he glanced about, and started. "So many," he breathed, looking at the denizens of the Fade who were gathering about. Feynriel could only hope he went unnoticed, both by the elf and the mage, and by the demons who were drawn by the stink of fear and the smell of magic gathering in the room. "You say not all of these are demons?"

"No, not all," Anders began to shape a Call for the Spirits of Compassion and Healing. "And you can't always tell which are which by looking. Demons can hide their natures, and good spirits don't always look as nice and kind as they are. Enough talk. It's time!"

"Very well," Fenris growled. He began to glow all over, a very bright, silvery blue. Stepping forward, he said, "Hawke—I am sorry for the pain I must cause." Then he plunged his right hand into her left breast.

Feynriel would much rather have been witnessing a sick sex game, he thought, as he saw Hawke bite down on the wad of bandage, every line of her body tightening in pain, and seeing Fenris' fingers move around under her skin would have made him vomit if he had not been asleep two floors down on the other side of the Tower. Fenris rooted about, then ripped out a blob of something that dripped blood on the floor.

"Here," Anders held out a dish to catch the tumor. "You know there's—."

"Yes, there's another bit of it, but it's attached somehow—." Fenris reached back in, "I'll have to pinch it off." This time he brought out a little sprig of something like seaweed. Hawke suddenly went limp and unconscious in the chair, her breast darkening to purple as a bruise spread under the unbroken skin

"It's a node and part of the vessels that carry aqueous humors," Anders identified it. "Now stand back!" He completed the Call to the Spirits—and nothing answered the call. "What? Something's wrong."

He, Feynriel, had been learning how to heal under Anders' tutelage for some weeks. Healing wasn't his primary talent, but he was good at calling the spirits, at least as good as his teacher, even if he couldn't perform other healing as easily. He had a feel for it, Anders had said. Now he sensed something, a presence unlike any demon or spirit he had ever met with, coming up upon them.

He turned—it was rather like swimming—and beheld a—what in the Void _was_ it?

* * *

A/N: I am far too fond of cliff hangers, I know it. The seaweedy bit Fenris removed was in fact a lymph node and some of the vessels; this operation is taking place just in time to keep cancer cells from traveling through the lymphatic system to the rest of Hawke's body. Good job lads! Now to get to answering some of the lovely reviews I've gotten lately. Thank you to every one who has been favoriting and following Bought and Sold.

In other news—Amazon is making it so we may be able to get_ paid_ for fanfiction writing. Yes! Yes! Yes! I put a link to the article in my profile.


	32. Unholy Trinity

When the three of them, Anders, Fenris and Feynriel, spoke of it afterwards, they learned that each of them had seen the demon differently. Anders saw a thing with a body like a corrupted Sylvan, with many arm-branches. Fenris saw the Abomination they had fought that day, and Feynriel saw a puppet like the ones a neighbor in the Alienage carved from bone and wood, a spindly, clacking thing that bobbed when it moved. The only thing they agreed on were that it had three heads, although to Anders they were disembodied, swirling around each other like the three walnut shells in a 'Find the Bean' game, and in Feynriel's vision they turned on a knob like the puppet's to show different faces.

Yet the faces were the same for all three men. One was that of a dull-eyed, slack-jawed lout such as one might meet in any tavern, except that instead of ears it had holes in its head, and when it turned, one could see right through to the other side. The second was also disfigured, only in this instance, the eyes were ragged holes which maggots crawled in and out of, and the rest of its plump, pouty face was set in hard lines. The third face was not even human. A rolling-eyed mabari stared around, its slavering jaws dripping with froth.

It began by snagging one of the little Spirits of Compassion, dove-like and feathery, out of the air, and dragged it, squeaking in terror, to one of its mouths. With a stomach-turning crunch, it snacked on it. "Heal her?" it scoffed. "I think not. Better she should die now, and let the Veil stay thin and ragged, the darkness reign over all."

"Die?" Fenris snapped, tearing his eyes away from the demon to glare at Anders. "What is this, mage? You never said she might die of this. You said this was safe!"

"I said it was safer than surgery, and she won't die, not unless she goes too deeply into shock—but I need the help of those spirits," Anders cried out, reaching for a mana potion and chugging it messily, casting Healing over the unconscious Hawke with the other hand. "What manner of demon are you? I charge you to answer in the name of Andralla—."

"We don't know," the thing said, sounding puzzled. "She is our enemy, and we are hers. She is a new thing for which there is no name yet, so we are new and do not know yet what manner of demon we are. But we know _our_names."

Fenris had not been persuaded to leave his greatsword behind, and now he reached for it. "I care not what you call yourself, you shall not have her," he vowed.

"It won't do any good, Fenris, it's not really there," the healer said. "Then tell me your name—your _names_," he corrected himself, reaching for another lyrium potion.

"I am Willful Ignorance", said the lout with nothing between his ears. "My Da never had no truck with readin', nor my Grandda afore him, and no more do I. What did anyone ever learn out of a bloody book? If I caught my son or daughter tryin' it, I'd take a switch to them till they bled. I won't have them puttin' on airs like they're better than me!"

The second head, whose eyes were gory sockets in which maggots writhed, spoke, "I am Blind Prejudice! Magic is evil, and all mages have to be controlled! All Templars are cruel and abusive! They deserve what they get! Filthy knife-ears, thieving shemlen, grit-sucking dusters!" A dribble of brownish sewage overflowed from the pursed, sneering lips. "Slavery serves to keep _those_ sort in their place! So what if four out of ten of their babies die? Let them do so, and decrease the surplus population."

"I am Rabid Religiosity!" growled the Mabari-head. "If it isn't in the Chant, it can't be true! The Qun forbids it! Heretic! Apostasy! Burn the books, stamp out the unbelievers! Obey! Believe!" Flecks of spittle flew as it ranted and barked. In the meantime, the beneficial spirits of the Fade were fleeing in all directions to get away from the monstrosity.

"EEEiyah!" Fenris shouted as he charged the horror, but his sword struck sparks off the flagstone floor, not troubling the thing at all. "Mage, how is it to be gotten rid of?"

"I don't know! Unless it crosses the Veil to manifest physically as a Shade, we can't attack it. It doesn't need to do that to kill her. Maker—her pulse is too thready, and her hands are like ice. Her lips are grey," Anders chafed Twyla's fingers. "We need another mage. We _need_ another mage!"

"Not the _witch_," Fenris said the word as though it were a bad one. "She'd likely ally with it."

Witnessing all this, Feynriel tried to wake himself, that he might offer what help he could, but all he could do was choke out a wheezy, "Stop!"

The wonder of it was, the creature heard him and turned. "The little _Dreamer_. You are her acolyte? Oh, what a pity. The first true Dreamer in centuries, and the first teacher he meets with is bent on pursuing scientia. Such a waste."

"Feynriel?" Anders asked surprised. "How long have you been—never mind. You're dreaming now? You're lucid? Fireball that thing! Do something, _anything_!"

He tried. He fireballed it, cast lightning bolts at it, and tried Winter's Grasp on it. These tore through its body like a sword cutting water, causing swirling, but severing nothing, damaging nothing. At least he distracted the demon so Anders could work. The creature laughed, a sound like marsh gas bubbling.

"Foolish Dreamer, you can't hurt us that way. We're only half in the Fade; the rest of us is…everywhere. We're more than any demon; we're a Blight of the mind. Or an idea, if you will. Ideas cannot be cut with swords or burned with magic." It laughed again. "Ideas to fight ideas."

"Ideas to fight ideas…I don't know what that means…" What was this monster?

Except that through working with Hawke, he _did_ have an inkling of what this new and unknown demon was. She had set him to find out and prove whether the world was flat or round, and how large it was. At first he had thought that was a ridiculous quest, because everyone knew it was flat, but then he'd started reading, and thinking. With the help of the floats that measured water levels in the aqueducts, he was surprised to learn that at a distance even though they were all at a level, the floats _dropped below the horizon_, because the world _was_ round. And they did so at a measurable rate, and you could figure out how big the world was.

Once you knew for certain that something as significant as the belief that the world was flat was wrong, your personal world was never the same again. It was terrifying and exhilarating both, and you also had the urge to tell people about it. Then you learned that they didn't want to hear it, they didn't believe it, and they insisted the Maker didn't make the world that way, or Andraste would have said so. Was that not the essence of this demon? And how did Hawke console him about the way people reacted so furiously, so defensively?

'_If something is true, if it is a fact, then it doesn't matter whether people believe in it or not. Make your intelligence into a sword to cut away the things 'everybody knows' to find what is real, and someday, the truth will shine out. I really do believe this, Feynriel_.'

_Make your intelligence into a sword_. He held out his hand, and _imagined_. He thought of a sword that would mirror what he felt when he realized what it meant when the more distant floats dropped lower and lower. It would be keen and bright, with ripples like water marking the blade.

And there it was. It had heft and weight and…he had no idea what to do with it, but he cut at the demon. The thing screamed in three voices at once, and a piece of it came away, so he cut again. Fenris shouted advice and a certain amount of criticism about his technique, which was pretty much nonexistent, but the monster was not good at defending itself, either, and by hacking away at its joints, he brought it down on its knees.

"You think this matters? You can't _kill _us, not while there are people in the world. We're not like other demons. We can possess anybody, not just mages, and we don't show like other Abominations. Anybody. Even people who are good and kind and love their children. We can possess anyone. Even any of you…just wait…You'll open your mouth, and one of us will speak through it. We'll destroy her…and all her works…the darkness will go on forever and_ ever_ and ever, without end." Only once he hacked each of the heads off was it silent.

Feynriel looked around. He could feel that he was waking up, but the last thing he did was to utter the Call for beneficial spirits to come and help Anders with Healing Hawke. They came. They came in great numbers, and at the forefront of them was one of the most powerful of all, a Spirit of Hope. As ugly as the trifold demon had been, Hope was beautiful. It was the first flower of the spring, the smile exchanged by lovers on their wedding day, the cry of a newborn, the light of dawn and the birdsong that celebrated it.

'_We_ shall always be here, too,' it said as it passed him. 'For you, and everyone'. He saw the relief on Anders' face just as his body began to reel his wandering soul back in. Hawke would live.

* * *

A/N: 'Scientia', the root word for science, literally means, 'I know, I understand', and in a broader sense originally meant 'the kind of knowledge which is true everywhere' as opposed to religion or law, which differed from place to place.


	33. Afterwards

"What manner of demon _was_ that?" Fenris asked. "One could make the case for calling it a rage demon, or a pride demon, or sloth or even fear, but not the usual sort of any of them. It looked like none of them."

It was all over except for the cleaning up. Hawke was in her bed and in a healing trance now that the strange surgery was behind them. The room was strewn with the detritus of the operation, the floor streaked with blood and spilled potion in places. As it was both unfair and indiscreet to leave the mess for Orana to find in the morning, they were working on it together.

"I honestly don't know, anymore than it did," Anders said, finding the laundry basket and dragging it out into the middle of the room. "However, it _was _the same one which we encountered this afternoon, animating the Abomination. I recognized its voices. One of the things that bothers me most about it is that it's so complex. Most Fade spirits, good or bad, personify simple concepts. Justice, Tedium, Lust, Hope—things like that. They don't have unique faces or personalities. This one is more sophisticated. Nor did it act like a normal demon. It should have been trying to possess her or attack her directly."

"Yet it is not a powerful spirit," the elf reasoned aloud, "for it fell apart on its own this afternoon, and Feynriel dispelled it with little difficulty. Or is it?"

"How powerful is Hawke?" Anders asked back.

"You and others say she is not. Even she herself says she is not, yet I have seen her do works that are far beyond what Danarius ever could, though he might kill to power his spells."

"Exactly. On the face of it, she's not. She has very little mana, yet she comes up with variations on the simplest spells such as I have never imagined. Ask her to fireball something, and it wouldn't even be singed. Lit farts are more impressive than her fireballs. Ask her to set fire to something, though, and let her figure out how best to do so—well, if she did, I'd rather be on a mountain top very far away, preferably in another country."

"So you are saying that this demon, which has declared itself her foe, is likewise apt to be unconventional, powerful in unanticipated ways." Fenris was gathering up the discarded towels and empty potion bottles.

Anders carefully washed the excised tumors and placed them into a jar, adding alcohol to preserve them. "I fear so. If it can do what it says it can, we will never be rid of it."

"A grim thought...Why take such care of those?" the elven warrior asked, nodding at the jar. "I would think you would want to dispose of them as quickly as possible."

"Well, you know Hawke," the healer shrugged.

"She's going to want to study them." The last statement was made in unison, in perfect agreement, and not without amusement.

"If I may ask…" Fenris began. "…I am not sure how to phrase it. How does one get a Hawke instead of an ordinary mage?"

"I'm tempted to make an off-color remark about asking Leandra how, but…the real explanation will not please you, given your feelings about mages." For all their dislike of each other, having gone through what they had just gone through had left Anders with a surprising fellow feeling for the elf. It had been a bonding experience, though to what degree was as yet undetermined.

"I would hear it anyway." Fenris set his jaw.

"It's called 'arcane derangement', because so often the mages who have it _are _deranged. Sometimes, magical talent expresses itself very differently from the way that it's taught in the Circle, which was the way Malcolm Hawke was taught, the way he taught, or tried to teach, Hawke. Hedge-mages, they're usually called—but that term dismisses them as second-rate. In truth, some of them possess powers no Circle spell can replicate. Often their powers are unpredictable and chaotic, eventually leading the mage into insanity—that's the 'deranged' part. Hawke's talent has largely been channeled into that ability of hers to see and influence invisibly small things. As to _why _it happened—if I had to guess, I would venture that it was her own curiosity that shaped her talent to that purpose. The rest—her creativity and resourcefulness—can be chalked up to her intelligence." Anders finished.

"Hawke is _not_ deranged," Fenris stated. "I have never known so sane a mage."

"I never said she was," Anders said defensively. "That's what it's called, however, and what usually happens. Everything all shipshape here again? Good." He went through the dressing room adjacent to Hawke's bedroom, and opened the wardrobe door. Two very anxious kittens leapt out, mewing pathetically. "I know, I know, you were locked up unfairly, but we couldn't have you underfoot while we were working, could we now, May-May? Come on, your mummy needs you to snuggle up and make her feel better. Just don't go jumping on her chest."

Gathering up a kitten in each hand with some difficulty, as they were half-grown adolescents now, all legs and much bigger than the babies they had been when he first saw them, Anders deposited both on the bed, where they sniffed Hawke suspiciously before curling up into furry bundles of noses, toes and tails.

A tentative knock sounded on the door. "Um, Anders? It's me, Feynriel."

"Hold a moment. We're about done here." Taking up the laundry and the remainder of the potions, he and Fenris left Hawke asleep among her felines.

"You did excellently well this night," Anders told the young mage as they began descending the tower stairs. "especially for one who was asleep and dreaming the whole time. Your Calling of the Spirits would have done justice to a mage with a lifetime's experience."

"Thank you, serah," the boy replied. "but Hawke. She is going to be all right, isn't she?"

"She'll be sore in the morning and she'll have to take it easy for a few days," Anders told him, "but as of right now, she is. In the future—cancer is a mystery. It may recur; Maker forbid it should. If it does, though—well, that's why I'm here. I will keep a close eye on her health. Think of me as a bodyguard like Fenris here, only of another kind."

"Hmm," said the aforementioned bodyguard. The comparison was new to him, yet he did not seem offended, only thoughtful. "See that you keep her well, then," he recovered his toughness.

"I am very glad of it," Feynriel said, "Magistra Hawke is—I've learned so much just in the time I've been here. Not only about magic and the natural world, but about people. Certainly I've learned enough to know that the work that's going on here is significant. Not just what Hawke's doing, but Dagna's inventing instruments to measure things no one ever thought to before, and Varric is inventing a new business model to do with the cookshops, and Aron's inventing the soups they'll sell—Hawke doesn't just do things herself, she inspires others—like you, too, with inventing new treatments."

"I'd hate to see what she will inspire Merrill to do, then." snorted Fenris. "I can only hope we survive it."

"I know you don't like Merrill—or me," the lad said the last words in an undertone, "but I think Merrill, like me, has spent too much time inside her own head, alone. Hawke makes us come out and look around. She, Merrill, that is, has grown a lot since then…Although I wonder if either of them, or you, know what that…thing meant when it called me a Dreamer, and said there were others in the past."

"I know it," Fenris surprised them. "The Magisters of ancient times who breached the Golden City were Dreamers, or Dreamwalkers, though I have heard them called 'Sominari' as well. If you are such, it elevates you above the masses. Among Magisters, there are two classes. Those who can trace their descent from Dreamers are called Altus, and they are the higher rank, in their minds, at least. The rest are Laetans. Hawke must be counted among them, worthless wretches though they are. If you desire to negotiate an apprenticeship in a House of greater prestige and renown, that will be the approach to take, should life here be not to your taste. To educate, or even to adopt, a Dreamer would be a fantastic coup. They would agree to nearly any terms you set."

"You're testing me," Feynriel guessed, quite intelligently. "I don't want to make a change or go to anyone else's Household. I know what Minrathous is like, not as well as you do, of course, and what other Magisters are, so I also know how fortunate I am. I could very easily have been dragged here in chains and sold as a slave. I might even be dead by now, and no one would care. No, I will stand by Hawke, whether this House rises or falls."

Fenris glanced at him. "It is not that I do not like you," he said, "it is that I do not trust you. It is ingrained in me not to trust mages; I have far too much cause not to trust. You have proved yourself, at least to some degree, this night. You both have…I bid you good night." Abruptly, he set down the laundry basket he was carrying and stalked off.

* * *

"So," Varric looked up at his interrogator; from his point-of-view, her breasts were _monumental_. "That was Hawke's first year in Minrathous. Things never exactly stood still after that. First, there were the friends and family of the dead Municipal Water Board magisters, and with my advice and Leandra's assistance she wrote them carefully worded condolence letters to the effect that she didn't blame them for what their scions did, and wouldn't go seeking retribution—yet. That shut them up and shut them down, at least for a while. She also ran for office, since the Board was down by five members including the representative from her district. She won by a landslide, which would have been more impressive if she hadn't been running unopposed. Three more board members quit when she was elected, and the rest were happy to let her run things the way she wanted. Soon she had all the aqueducts in the city flowing again, and the mortality rate dropped significantly. She also continued her research and worked on her book. She and Merrill succeeded in getting two crystals in distant rooms to resonate in unison, but the crystals went to dust after one go. Still, it showed they were on the right track.

"The shipments of food from Nevarre to Fereldan and to refugees in the Free Marches began. It didn't have much impact on the Tevinter Imperium at first; they prided themselves on having a year's worth of food in storage, and stored food has to be rotated and used before it goes bad, so no one panicked that first year. We got word that King Alistair ordered the Chantries to offer prayers at every service for the continued health, well-being, and prosperity of their benefactor, which was nice of him. Maybe it even helped.

"Leandra temporarily sublimated her desire for grandchildren in revamping her own and her daughter's wardrobe. Her ideas caught on. She's the reason why all the women in the Imperium are now going around in tunicas and togas like they stepped down off a frieze from antiquity. She also helped develop the basic broth for the noodle shops, which were coming along—after all, there's no chicken soup better than your mother's, right?

"I was hammering out a business plan for the shops. We wanted the shops to offer consistent food, so we had to find people who were willing to do things our way and then train them up. The idea was that the broth and noodles would be made according to the same recipe everywhere, and then individual locations would have their own additions, like smoked nug meat and mushrooms in the Dwarven Quarter, because nobody wants to go out and eat the same things all over the place. Hawke got the ultimate endorsement for her plan from the big guy himself, the Archon, who as you'll recall, was a gourmand of the first order. He also gave us the name by which the shops are known: Amen Noodles, because after he finished two gallons of soup with all the different fixings we came up with, he thumped his stomach and said 'Amen!' It was clear then that the shops wouldn't just be successful; they would be _phenomenally_ successful.

"So it went, until one night an old, old woman, or a woman who was made up to look old, even though her ankles were far too shapely, knocked on the door and said that 'Old Naishe' was there to see Hawke…"

* * *

A/N: Finally a chapter of better length! The concept of 'arcane derangement' is from the Dragon Age: Asunder novel by David Gaider, and details about Tevinter society are from DA: The World of Thedas. Behind on review replies again, will catch up as soon as I can. I do not apologize for putting ramen soup into this world or for the pun. Real ramen, not the supermarket packets, is really very, very good. Who is Naishe? Read the DA comic books, or learn in my next chapter!


	34. Surprise!

"I know of no one called 'Naishe', old or not," Aveline said, eyeing the age-bent grannie, huddled in a shawl from under which a few grey-streaked locks straggled. One of her eyes was bleary and white, and her wrinkles were only accentuated by a thick layer of flaking makeup—ugh. "If you wish to enter the Hawke's Tower, you must give up any and all weapons you have on your person, and I will check to see that you have done so by searching you."

"If it must be, then it must be—just don't go enjoying yourself too much, Man-Hands." The first part of it was said in the quavery, crackly soprano of age, but the rest was a distinctly younger, sultrier alto.

"Isabella?!" Aveline exclaimed, and then recovered herself. "I always thought your lifestyle would be prematurely ageing, but I must say I never expected it to work _quite_ this fast."

"Hush! Very funny. Keep your voice down, Big Girl, and let me_ in_, why don't you?" Once inside, the pirate threw off the shawl—she had donned a long drab dress as part of the disguise, but nothing would disguise _those_ breasts. "The first thing I'm going to need is to wash—this make-up itches—and the next is to eat. I haven't had a bite since before dawn. Where's Hawke?"

"At the theater with half the household, or close to it. _What_ did you do to your eye?" Aveline wondered.

Isabella reached up and plucked a scrap of whitish stuff from her eyeball. "It's that bit of membrane you get inside an eggshell. Old rogue's trick, that one. Ashes combed into the hair, a lot of thick gooey make up that cracks badly as it dries, and hey, presto! Suddenly you're forty years older."

"What mess have you gotten yourself into this time?" Aveline asked.

"I'm saving it for Hawke," Isabella replied.

"Must be the first time _you_ ever 'saved it' for anybody," retorted the redhead reflexively, but her heart wasn't in it from the tone of her voice. "Coming here in disguise, not wanting to talk—this is going to be very bad, isn't it?

"Urgh! I need to wash before my face falls off," Isabella evaded. "Where's the water, or do I have to strip down and wash in the fountain?"

"There's a washbasin through here. Julia, can you raid the kitchens for whatever's handy, and bring it—bring it out into the courtyard. Thanks." Aveline directed.

"So, tell me about everything I've missed," the pirate commanded as she reappeared, hair streaming wet, rubbing off the last traces of the make-up. "and don't be stingy with the details. Why are you sitting home alone if Hawke's at the theater? Doesn't she need a body guard anymore?"

"I saw the play earlier this week, and Fenris is on duty tonight."

"Fenris? You mean Mr. Lean and Lanky Elf himself? He came back?" Isabella's eyes gleamed.

"Leandra, too," Aveline confirmed.

"Have he and Hawke peeled off each other's smalls yet?" the pirate inquired as she picked up a sandwich.

"Not that I'm aware of. In fact—I don't know when I noticed it exactly, but for at least the last couple of months, he's been treating her as if she'd break with rough handling."

"Maybe she'd like that," Isabella replied impishly. "I know _I_ would."

"You don't seem surprised that he returned."

"I'm not," Isabella took another bite of sandwich, chewed a little and said, through the food. "Those two—he was wanting to board her from the start, and she would have been happy to strip the sails off his mainmast, if only she wasn't burdened by scruples, poor thing." She swallowed. "No, it's Leandra's return that surprises me more. I would have thought she'd prefer life as a noblewoman of Kirkwall again—I don't suppose Carver came back, too? _There's_ a mast worth the rigging. Lovely big laddie, that one."

"Wha—no, I don't want to hear it. What I do want to know is why you ran into such trouble on the way from here to Kirkwall. With the amount of money Twyla paid you, I would have thought you would be more careful of her family."

Isabella nearly choked on the next bite of her sandwich for laughing, and with streaming eyes, had to wash the mouthful down with wine. "Oh, don't make me do that! Do you want to kill me? _Don't_ answer that! Hawke didn't pay me extra for their passage to keep them _out_ of trouble, she paid me to get them _into_ trouble. It was a scheme we worked up between the two of us. She didn't want the boys to feel like dead weight on the voyage after she talked up how they had to protect Leandra and all that. So I made sure that we encountered just enough trouble to need their assistance. Any further assistance they needed to bolster their manhoods was…on the house."

"Really?" Aveline mused on that. "So Carver took you up on it, and Fenris didn't. Interesting."

"I think it would have been much more interesting if he had—So, what else has been going on?"

"To begin with, when Leandra and Fenris returned, they brought three others with them…"

Sometime later:

"The idea behind the noodle shops was not to make food that would make Orlesian critics weep for joy, just to provide a meal that would be nutritious, cheap, and good, to as many people as possible, as easily and quickly as possible. The initial investment was large, but Varric says that at the rate things are going, the shops will turn a profit by the end of this year. I've taken to patrolling the immediate neighborhood to be sure things are quiet, and at the noodle shop on our corner, people queue up around the block for soup. It's hard to listen to what they say sometimes. They talk about how wonderful it is to get as much meat in one bowl as they're used to getting in an entire week, and they're only talking about a few ounces of pork. The poverty here is—shameful."

"So Hawke's still going around doing good wherever she can, is she?" Isabella sounded more speculative than anything else.

"Yes, but don't mistake compassion for weakness, because it isn't. Oh, the last thing I meant to tell you! I nearly forgot. Hawke shaved her head." Aveline finished.

"Shaved her head? But she had such lovely hair!" Isabella had finished every drop of wine and now was picking up crumbs from the tray with a wetted forefinger.

"It was during the worst of the heat—I can call for more food if you're that hungry, you know." The kitchen had not been stingy, but Isabella certainly had…appetites.

"The cake was just so delicious I didn't want to waste even the tiniest bit. Is she still shaving it? I can't wait to see."

"No, she's letting it grow back. She looks almost boyish now." Aveline smiled a little.

"Can't _wait_ to see that," the pirate leered. "Now, this lad Feynriel—."

"His voice has only just begun to break, Isabella, so it's hands off for a while longer. Forever, if possible." There was a sound at the gates, and Aveline got up to welcome the theatergoers home, Isabella at her heels.

"Yet what manner of message does it send when the most charismatic character is the villain of the piece?" asked Fenris. "The hero was dull and flat."

"That's why the central character is often called the 'protagonist', because they aren't always heroic." Hawke replied. "There are anti-heroes, who are the opposite of everything the hero ought to be, and sometimes ordinary people are thrust into the central role. Then—_Isabella_? Is that you? What on earth are you wearing that for?"

"She's in trouble," Aveline explained.

The theater party had included not only Leandra, Hawke and Fenris, but also Varric, Merrill, Anders, Feynriel, Dagna, and Orana, many of whom had never met Isabella. (Hawke had bought out half the first tier to accommodate them.) After introductions were performed all around, Isabella screwed up her face.

"As Aveline said, sweet thing, I am in, well, a bit of a bind. I was thinking, 'Who do I know who likes nothing better than to help out, but Hawke?', and here I am. You see, I've been involved in moving goods for various…entrepreneurs and the…agent who arranged my last cargo offered_ such_ a good payment, provided no questions were asked. Yes, yes, I should have been suspicious, but I owed a pile of money already. I went to the meeting place, and…to make a long story short, they were Blight refugees. Like you."

"You mean they were going to be sold into slavery," Anders stated, harshly. "Lured with promises of jobs and homes for them and their families."

"Yes. You know, you look familiar…" She eyed the mage. "Anyhow, they didn't know—not yet. There were about a hundred and fifty of them, all told, both human and elven. Some were children and babes in arms, and there were even a handful of oldsters. Even _**I**_ can see _that's_ wrong. But—I owed so much, I couldn't just turn Castillon down flat. So I took them on board, and set off for here." Isabella paused for a moment, and Fenris made a growling sound in his throat.

"Yet you did not bring them here, or if you did, you have not turned them over to the slave pens," Twyla said, "because the chances that I would help you after that are pretty much nil, and you're smarter than that."

Isabella laughed, briefly. "Yes, but only just. I set them ashore in a cove I know, and then there was a storm. I lost my ship, lost most of my men, only just escaped with my life, and here I am. You see, I meant to go back for them—that cove is days away from any settlement, and they've no food, no shelter. I can't get another ship to save my_ own_ life, Castillon's people are after me, and they're out there camping on bare rock. Please, Hawke. Help me. Help them."

Twyla was silent for a long moment.

"You do not mean to refuse?" Fenris began.

"What? No, of course not. I was making plans. Here's what we're going to do first. Isabella, you are going to send Castillon a message, however it's done, telling him you know a magister who hates auctions, is tired of secondhand goods, and wants to buy all your cargo in one huge job lot, as it were. However, this buyer doesn't like to do business with strangers, so _you'll _have to broker the deal. Tell him that you might be able to take this person for much more than the going rate, and what does he think you should charge? Appeal to his greed—I'm sure you'll know how best to do so. Get him so interested he calls off his hounds."

"But he'll want to know details, names, credit rating," Isabella protested.

"He'll have them. You will tell him it's me."

* * *

A/N: and so it begins…


	35. Hayder's Gonna Hate

"And this is it: The Golden Pandion," Twyla swept her hand out with a flourish as she and Leandra stepped out onto the deck of her ship.

"The Golden Pandion," Leandra echoed. "Now, who came up with the name, and what does it mean?"

"That was me," Anders flashed her a smile. "We were all bandying about possible names, and the 'Sea-Hawk' was the most popular, but there's already several ships registered with that name or one like it. So I remembered that a sea hawk is also what we call an osprey, and there was a myth about a king named Pandion who was turned into an osprey by some god or magister or other, and there you have it."

Faced with the problem of rescuing a hundred and fifty odd people, and no ship to ferry them back from Seheron, Twyla had simply gone out and bought a brand new one for three times the going rate. The person this stunned most was Isabella, who had protested that it could not be done, that ships were commissioned months or even years in advance, not made for sale at market like dishes or ribbons.

At any rate, this meant the ship had no lingering miasma of slavery about it, psychic or otherwise, but was clean and shining, smelling only of fresh wood, tar, paint and varnish.

"It is a beautiful ship," Leandra observed, as she was given the grand tour. Something was wrong, she knew it intuitively, but she did not know exactly what.

Geniuses rarely sprang up at random; usually there were several intelligent people among the clan. Malcolm Hawke had been one of these, but Leandra was another. She knew quite well that Twyla had not gone rail thin and bald simply out of nerves, and that the recent bout of 'bilious fever' which left her bed ridden for several days had not been what she and Anders both said it was. However, Leandra also understood full well why they had not told her exactly how sick her one remaining daughter was.

Something about this rescue mission did not set quite right with her, but she could not tell just what or who was the cause—not yet. Isabella was going, of course. As the captain, and as the only person with exact knowledge of where she had left the refugees, she had to. Anders was going, given the likelihood that some of them would be sick or hurt, and so too was Feynriel , who was turning out to be very good at calling spirits. Some of the refugees were Dalish, so Merrill was going to vouch for their bona fides.

Dagna had recently invented a navigation instrument she called an 'encompass' which she wanted to try out in the real world, so she was going, and Varric was going because he was, well, because he was Varric. Since Twyla was going, so too was Fenris, as her bodyguard.

But why _was_ Twyla going? As Leandra saw it, rescuing the refugees was the right thing to do. They were bringing along provisions and water, they had a boat big enough to carry them all, and they had healers on hand—all that was good and sensible. They were going to go to Seheron, pick the refugees up, and take them somewhere they would be free and safe. That was the plan.

Did they really need Twyla along to do that?

Isabella still looked dazed as she looked around at her new vessel.

"Still hard to believe it's real?" Leandra teased her.

"No-well, perhaps a little. I knew Hawke was rich, but even so, to be able to afford all this at a moment's notice?"

"Oh, I know how she did that," Merrill chirped. "Researching things is like drawing a map as you go along-you find a lot of places along the way that you had no idea were there before you get to where you wanted to go in the first place. It turns out that coal and diamonds are made of the same stuff, only diamonds have their multiatomies lined up so they look prettier. She sold some of them-almost all of them turned out very yellow, which people don't like as much as the colorless sort. I think yellow is much more cheerful. One turned out blue, and she's having that one cut and set for-." She suddenly clapped her hands over her mouth. "I shouldn't have said that, not in front of-I shouldn't have said _that,_ either." The way her eyes rolled in Leandra's direction spoke for her.

"It's all right," Leandra said, amused. "Something that your children made for you is always dearer to a mother than something they just went out and bought. I will remember to be surprised when I get it."

"You will? That's good. It's exactly the sort of thing I would blurt out. I do that a lot." Merrill scuffed her toes along the deck. "I'm sure everyone has noticed."

"It's all right, Kitten," Isabella patted her on the shoulder. "Listening to you is like birdsong—it cheers the place up."

One of the crew, hastily hired from the soberest available men in various dockside taverns, scrambled down a hatch to inform them, "Scuse me, Captain, but there's a lander named Hayder up here says he wants a word with ya—and he brought friends, bout twenty of them, I'd say."

"That dog!" Isabella frowned. "Castillion won't have gotten my letter yet, and even if he had, he couldn't send Hayder here that quickly, so he must have set him on my trail weeks ago. I was afraid of this. Still—twenty of them, plus their leader. We can take them!"

"And get blood on that nice new deck?" Twyla raised an eyebrow.

"Sweet thing, it's likely to get blood on it sooner rather than later," Isabella reached for the daggers on her back and headed topside.

"Let me try a_ different_ approach first," Twyla reached for the fan tucked into her belt and snapped it open. "We can always start slinging blades and spells around if it doesn't work." She started up the ladder.

"What? What are you going to do?" Isabella followed her, and everyone else followed Isabella, Varric commenting cheerily on the view of her backside, which earned him a saucy grin. Up top, Twyla drew herself up as tall as she could go, her eyes narrowing and her chin thrust out, idly waving her fan.

"Ah, Isabella, there you are," oozed the nondescript man in leather armor at the head of the pack of assorted ruffians, focusing on the pirate to the exclusion of all else. "Nice new ship you got here. Wonder how you paid for it? That's the question Castillion's gonna be asking—."

He got no further than that, because Twyla cut him off. "Remove yourselves. I do not care to have you cluttering up my ship. You offend the eye."

"Wha—?" he gawked, as well he might. Leandra was quite proud of the dress her daughter was wearing, inspired by and colored like a ancient figured redware wide cup. "Who's this fancy piece, then? Brought your best girlfriend along, have ya?"

"I do not believe you understand this situation. This is not Captain Isabella's ship. It is my ship. I should also add that I am a magister. I repeat: Remove yourselves." Twyla's fanning became choppy, like an annoyed cat flicking its tail. Leandra was impressed; her social training had included the flirtatious Language of the Fan as practiced in Orlais, a series of signals one could send across a crowded room. Twyla had taken it further, as she handled the fan as if it were a literal weapon.

"You're a little behind with the news, Hayder," Isabella was forced into the unfamiliar role of diplomat. "This is Magistra Hawke, who is negotiating to buy my entire cargo. I'm brokering for Castillion."

"Whut cargo?" Hayder sneered. "You've gone and buggered up another run, haven't you?"

"I still believe you do not understand," Twyla cut in again, snapping the fan shut with the finality of a spine breaking. "If I, the buyer, am not concerned about where the cargo currently is, yet I still intend to make payment, I do not see why you should be. Moreover, you are still cluttering up my deck. This is Minrathous, and I am a magister. You are trespassing on private property, and I have the right to punish all of you as I see fit. Should I choose to turn you inside out and keep you alive for the next twenty years in endless silent agony just to observe the workings of your internal organs, the most my peers would say about it is, 'Interesting. How did you do it?' Is this not so?"

She turned to her friends, and with the eye Hayder could not see, gave them a huge wink, her mouth quirking up in a half-smile. They scrambled to agree, nodding for all they were worth. Fenris in particular looked both horrified and disgusted.

"Should you think of slaughtering us all first—well, even should you somehow prevail, the punishment for murdering a magister makes my ideas seem almost merciful." She tapped the closed fan in her palm impatiently. "If you have any doubts about my ability to pay, you are free to ask about me around the city. You might also ask what happened to the last group of people who tried to kill me out of hand. Do not make me tell you to leave again."

Hayder's skin took on the slick glitter of a man who is suddenly awash with fear. "Is that—," He made a gesture for his people to retreat, and they nearly fell over themselves to do it. "V-very sorry to have troubled you."

Isabella shot Twyla one look of admiration and awe before pursuing Hayder down the gangplank. "Just one moment, you. I'm sending off a message about this to Castillion tonight." She poked the unhappy man in the shoulder. "If you've queered this deal, I'm going to suggest he throw you in as a bonus. He's a man who would sell his own grandmothers up the river, and probably did, so don't imagine he'd think twice about selling you. And if so, I hope the Magistra gelds you and makes you wear your testicles as earrings."

Having had the last word, she turned on her heel and marched back up the gangplank.

"Sweet thing," she dimpled at Leandra's daughter, "that was superb." She hugged Twyla around the shoulders. "Now that I know how well you bluff, I'm going to clean you out at Wicked Grace."

"Who says I was bluffing?" Twyla shot back.

Leandra smiled to herself as she watched the scene. That did answer her question about why her daughter had to go along. Twyla was the leader, and whatever situation they encountered, she could get them out of it, somehow or other.

And yet, the sense of something being wrong still nagged at her.

* * *

A/N: So yeah, it's been a while since I last updated this story. First, plot bunnies hijacked me and made me start a new fic about Ser Cauthrien and Loghain in which Cailan gets his ass handed to him, called The Lieutenant, and then someone I love a lot had a major health crisis with a predicted slow recovery, so I've been taking care of him. If you like my work, The Lieutenant could use a bit more love, and if you like this one, things should be moving forward again. Thank you so much to all my readers and reviewers, and thank you for being patient. Love ya! And I apologize for the chapter title.


	36. Forbodings

"Seheron," Fenris mused. "I was born there, or so I was told. I do not know if it is true." He and Hawke were standing together near the prow of the Golden Pandion, idly watching the water. There was not much for them to do at the moment, as it would be at least a day and a half before they reached Isabella's cove.

"You recall nothing of it?" Twyla asked. He glanced at her. Her hair had grown out long enough to be sleeked in waves against her head, she had gained weight and her skin had lost the undertone of ashy grey that made her look as though she would crumble at a touch. She was, in short, better. Much better, and he was both glad and proud of that. For once, he had helped to save a life, and it was the life he cherished as no other at that. It felt better to help heal than it did to kill, underscoring what a wretched thing it was to have been forged into little better than an instrument of death.

"Virtually nothing from my childhood. Sometimes I glimpse something that brings back a moment, and I recall—an old man gutting a fish, tossing the entrails in the water, and the vandal fish rising to devour them. Or being told what to pull and what to leave alone in a vegetable patch. I hear a woman humming a tune, and I remember the words without hearing them sung. Something my mother used to sing, perhaps. Nothing important. Nothing useful, in this situation."

"I hope nothing _has_to be useful in this situation," Twyla replied. "I would like it very much if this could be accomplished simply and swiftly, without any complications."

Fenris couldn't help it: he snorted. "Be reasonable. When has anything your House been involved in been uncomplicated?"

"We do have a gift for stumbling upon madness," she admitted.

"I would reject or return it if it were a gift," he returned. "Yet—I have greater knowledge of Seheron from later in my life because—," he paused. "—because Danarius took me with him when he was ordered there by the Senate, to quell the Qunari influence and retake the island. It failed. He failed." There he stopped again, trying to work out how to put what he had to say into words.

Twyla took his pause for something else. "I have not forgotten my promise, Fenris. It may seem as though I have made no move. I ask that you trust me a while longer."

"I will. I do. Might I ask something of you in return?"

"You can always ask, and if I can give you what you want, I will." She turned around to lean back against the rail, propping herself on her elbows

"Then—I would ask that you never act the haughty, imperious Magister again, even though you do not mean it. It is…disturbing."

She was silent for a moment that stretched out too long. "Yet twenty people, and perhaps more that Hayder was holding back in reserve, walked away alive because I pretended to be something I am not. Hayder himself seems to be a waste of life, but surely among those twenty people were_some_ who deserved to live. If there weren't…then the world is too dark a place to go on living in. It doesn't take an evil person to do an evil deed, just an ordinary one, or even a good one, who makes the wrong decision or does something stupid in a bad moment. No, I cannot promise I will never act like that again—but I can promise it will only ever be an act. I regret that I can't give you the answer you want."

"I am disappointed, but I had rather have that honest answer than an easy lie to placate me," he told her. "There is another matter I wished to speak of, however. It is about Isabella. I can see why you call her friend—she is amusing and appealing, in her way. Easy to like. I do not entirely trust her, however."

"Please don't say she's just plain 'easy'," Hawke shook her head. "Aveline makes quite enough remarks like that already. I…rather envy Isabella her freedom and how simple it is for her to give and accept affection."

That comment made Fenris blink. It was true that her illness had daunted him. He had not wanted to press his affections on her while she was unwell and unhappy, but neither had he known when the time might be right to remind her he loved and wanted her. Was she as unsure of how to begin again as he was?

"I would not say that of her. I too have known and envied those who love without limitation. No, it is not that aspect of Isabella's life that I question. What I know of her is this: she is very much a creature who lives for the moment and in the moment, with little thought or feeling for much besides her pleasures, which includes her ship. That she has discovered some conscience regarding those who were to be sold into slavery is much to her credit, but I doubt it has done much to alter her nature.

"Isabella feels little responsibility for anything, with the exception of her crew, in as much as they are needed to sail her vessel. She downplays dangers which might stand between her and her desires. She has said that the Qunari are nowhere near the cove where she is taking us. I would not rely on her word. Much may have changed even in the few days since she left the refugees there; the Qunari may have discovered the place. She may have been mistaken, or she may have exaggerated. She may even have lied outright, thinking herself more than equal to any situation that might arise. We should be wary."

"You are not wont to be so eloquent," Twyla's brow furrowed in thought. "It speaks of how seriously you take this. Isabella is my friend, but in truth, you have spent more hours in her company than I, since you traveled with her to Kirkwall, so I must defer to you as knowing her better… The Qunari must know who I am by now, that I killed many of them. I have heard that the Qun forbids vengeance, but no doubt they will make an exception in my case. Meeting with them again would be… I must make some preparations, just in case. Thank you, Fenris."

It was gratifying to be taken so seriously, but any real pleasure he felt it was overwhelmed the next day when he discovered that his misgivings did not even scratch the surface. When they sailed into the secluded harbor the next day, it was to discover that in addition to a hundred and fifty refugees, there were more than two hundred and fifty Qunari waiting for them. Each and every refugee had a Kossith warrior either holding a blade to their throats or had their grey hands wrapped around their necks. Even the babies each had a grim Qunari nursemaid to hold them, one arm supporting their fragile bodies and a hand waiting to rip off their heads

* * *

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A/N: So the mystery virus my SO has is not a virus after all, but Lyme disease. He very nearly ended up in the hospital, but now the antibiotics are doing what they should. I apologize for not answering my reviews this week, as it's been a bad one. Getting better, though! Thank you all so much for your positive words and expressions of support.


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